“ I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. that’s the thing about girls. every time they do something pretty, even if they’re not much to look at, or even if they’re sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. girls. jesus christ. they can drive you crazy. they really can.
— catcher in the rye
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.
— Kahlil Gibran
The Magnetic Fields, “The Book of Love”
The book of love is long and boring
No one can lift the damn thing
It’s full of charts and facts and figures
and instructions for dancing
but I, I love it when you read to me
and you, you can read me anything
No one can lift the damn thing
It’s full of charts and facts and figures
and instructions for dancing
but I, I love it when you read to me
and you, you can read me anything
The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.
— Jack Keruoac
“the most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek.”
- robert louis stevenson
“i want to stand as close to the edge as i can without going over. out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”
— kurt vonnegut
“it is completely selfless love: tereza did not want anything of karenin; she did not ever ask him to love her back. nor has she ever asked herself the questions that plague human couples: does he love me? does he love anybody more than me? does he love me more than i love him? perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.”
“when i was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. when I went to school, they asked me what i wanted to be when i grew up. i wrote down ‘happy’. they told me i didn’t understand the assignment, and i told them they didn’t understand life.”
– john lennon
“waking up was a sheer delight for him; he always showed a naïve and simple amazement at the discovery that he was back on earth; he was sincerely pleased. she, on the other hand, awoke with great reluctance, with a desire to stave off the day by keeping her eyes closed.”
“how old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?”
- satchel paige
"the heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become… conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. what then shall we choose? weight or lightness?”
“while people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and exchange motifs…but if they meet when they are older, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them.”
