- Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and in this hasn’t changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman. — John Berger
- Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today. — Lawrence Krauss
- I walk around the school hallways and look at the people. I look at the teachers and wonder why they're here. If they like their jobs. Or us. And I wonder how smart they were when they were fifteen. Not in a mean way. In a curious way. It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report due on top of that. Or wondering who did the heart breaking. And wondering why. — Stephen Chbosky, The perks of being a wallflower
- Sometimes I think I have a slight problem. Then I remember most of my friends are also readingly obsessed. It’s a struggle for our kind to send flowers on Valentine’s Day instead of a book. We think all librarians are hot. When we read one of those newspaper articles about some old mad coot found dead in his apartment, crushed by thousands of books, we think to ourselves “How romantic.” We not only slow down at every used-book store, we slam on the brakes and make illegal u-turns. We haunt those musty old stores so often that sometimes we run into actual copies of books we once owned, and greet them like long-lost pets. — Matt Groening
- We’re all a little broken. We’re all a little twisted. We’re all less than we could be or want to be. — Conor Oberst
- Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I’m one of them. — Ray Bradbury
- Does it break my heart, of course, every moment of every day, into more pieces than my heart was 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, my cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don’t know, but it’s 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. — Jonathan Safran-Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
- You know, she was four years old the first time she beat me at hide and seek. Four. I was looking for her for hours. When I finally found her she just smiled. You know, that Effy smile that means “you don’t know me at all, you never will”. See that’s a kind of magic. She’s so good at concealing things, hiding, avoiding. — Skins
- I hate when people ask what a book is about. People who read for plot, people who suck out the story like the cream filling in an Oreo, should stick to comic strips and soap operas… . Every book worth a damn is about emotions and love and death and pain. It’s about words. It’s about a man dealing with life. Okay? — J. R. Moehringer
- God damn it, you’ve got to be kind. — Kurt Vonnegut
- Apparently orgasm is the only point where your mind becomes completely empty—you think of nothing for that second. That's why it's so compelling—it's a tiny taste of death. Your mind is void—you have nothing in your head save white light. Nothing save that white light and 'YES!'—which is fantastic. Just knowing 'Yes.' — Jeff Buckley
- People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person that shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah, too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave. A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master.
- You will be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit. - Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
- What a great poem teaches you, and it's not intellectual at all, is the resonance in the language that's heard there. This goes back to the very origins of poetry and to the very origins of language. I think poetry is as old as language, and both come out of the same thing - an effort to try to express something that is inexpressible. If something can't be said, what do you do? You scream. - W.S. Merwin
- Sometimes while I ride the subway I try to look at each person and imagine what they look like to someone who is totally in love with them. I think everyone has had someone look at them that way, whether it was a lover, or a parent, or a friend, whether they know it or not. It’s a wonderful thing, to look at someone to whom I would never be attracted and think about what looking at them feels like to someone who is devouring every part of their image, who has invisible strings that are connected to this person tied to every part of their body. I think this fun pastime is a way of cultivating compassion. It feels good to think about people that way, and to use that part of my mind that I think is traditionally reserved for a tiny portion of people I’ll meet in my life to appreciate the general public.
apr 24 2011 ∞
dec 28 2012 +