- what about little microphones? what if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls?
- "parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents."
- "but if you don't tell me anything, how can I ever be right?" he circled something in an article and said, "another way of looking at it would be, how could you ever be wrong?"
- "we could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened."
- does it break my heart, of course, every moment of every day, into more pieces than my heart is made of, I never thought of myself as quiet, much less silent, I never thought about things at all, everything changed, the distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn't the world, it wasn't the bombs and burning buildings, it was me, my thinking, the cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but its' so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.
- ...the meaning of my thoughts started to float away from me, like leaves that fall from a tree into a river, I was the tree, the world was the river.
- "look at how they look. maybe then don't know that we've lost everything, but they know something's off."
- I'd experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough?
- "why do beautiful songs make you sad?" "becausa they aren't true." "never?" "nothing is beautiful and true."
- "I hope you never love anything as much as I love you. over."
- ...and so I felt, that night, like the turtle that everything in the universe was on top of.
- I told her, "humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are." "and the more you wage war?"
- ...sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all of the lives I'm not living.
- I wanted to call her name, but I didn't want her to hear my voice, all of my desire was based on that one brief exchange, held in the palm of our half hour together were one hundred million arguments, and impossible admissions, and silences.
- ...she wants to know if I love her, that's all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet...
- I felt, that night, on that stage, under that skull, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone. I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was eorth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it? What's so horrible about being dead forever and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What's so great about feeling and dreaming?
- I watched him write, it's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life.
- when I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. everything moved me. a dog following a stranger. that made me feel so much. a calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did.
- you cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.
- anyone who believes that a second is faster than a decade did not live my life.
- how many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love?
- I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live, Oskar.
- "no matter how much I feel, I'm not going to let it out. if I have to cry, I'm gonna cry on the inside. if I have to bleed, I'll bruise. if my heart starts going crazy, I'm not gonna tell everyone in the world about it. it doesn't help anything. it just makes everyone's life worse." "but if you're burying your feeling deep inside you, you won't really be you, will you?"
- I hope you never think of anything as much as I think of you.
- when I no longer had to be strong in front of you, I became very weak. I brought myself to the ground, which was where I belonged. I hit the floor with my fists. I wanted to break my hands, but when it hurt too much, I stopped. I was too selfish to break my hands for my only child.
- when I looked at you, my life made sense. even the bad things made sense. they were necessary to make you possible.
- "are you afraid?" "afraid of what?" she said, "life is scarier than death."
- "I'm so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything"
- ...why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time, my biggest regret is how much I believed in the future..
- the mistakes I've made are dead to me. but I can't take back the things I never did.
- the night before I lost everything was like any other night.
may 1 2020 ∞
may 6 2020 +