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6417def And this of course, was the simplest definition of depression that he knew of: strongly disliking yourself. Jonathan Franzen
20c336d Being dead's only a problem if you know you're dead, which you never do because you're dead! Jonathan Franzen
f0dbf0a Fiction is a particularly effective way for strangers to connect across time and distance Jonathan Franzen
c7324e5 You ever watch a football game and get totally into it? Why? It's not a real battle. It's just a game somebody made up. So how can you take it seriously? Or, you ever see a movie that made your heart about jump out of your chest? Or one that made you cry? Why? It wasn't real. You ever look at a photo of food that made your mouth water? Why? You can't eat the picture. . . . . . Same thing with water towers and God. I don't have to be a belie.. Pete Hautman
9b16936 During the dark night there is no choice but to surrender control, give in to unknowing, and stop and listen to whatever signals of wisdom might come along. It's a time of enforced retreat and perhaps unwilling withdrawal. The dark night is more than a learning experience; it's a profound initiation into a realm that nothing in the culture, so preoccupied with external concerns and material success, prepares you for. Thomas Moore
f2edc47 The moment someone says, "Hey, everyone, listen to the words in this song," your party is over." Amy Sedaris
d322269 Motherfucker, you try that again and I'll come in there with a fucking coat hanger and give you something to fucking kick about David Sedaris
93547d4 Pandas and rain forests are never mentioned when it comes to the millions of people taking joyrides in their Range Rovers. Rather, it's the little things we're strong-armed into conserving. At a chain coffee bar in San Francisco, I saw a sign near the cream counter that read NAPKINS COME FROM TREES - CONSERVE! In case you missed the first sign, there was a second one two feet away, reading YOU WASTE NAPKINS - YOU WASTE TREES!!! The cups, of.. David Sedaris
5a8630f I wasn't broken, just resting, readying myself for the next big thing. David Sedaris
bb7e93c Snowball just leads elves on, elves and Santas. He is playing a dangerous game. David Sedaris
083c652 What were you asleep? Helen would say as I opened the door. "I've been up since five." In her hand would be aluminum tray covered with foil, either that or a saucepan with a lid on it. "Well," I'd tell her, "I didn't go to bed until three." "I didn't go to bed until three thirty." This was how it was with her: If you got fifteen minutes of sleep, she got only ten. If you had a cold, she had the flu. If you'd dodged a bullet, she'd dodged fi.. David Sedaris
341f463 Cherchez la femme, Bucky. Remember that. french los-angeles noir noir-fiction pulp-fiction James Ellroy
5a2c80d Tell me anything. Tell me everything. Revoke our time apart. Love me fierce in danger. James Ellroy
6f2889f Within Siddhartha there slowly grew and ripened the knowledge of what wisdom really was and the goal of his long seeking. It was nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life. This thought matured in him slowly, and it was reflected in Vasudeva's old childlike face: harmony, knowledge of the eternal perfection of the world, and unity. Hermann Hesse
dd93932 Those who direct the maximum force of their desires towards the center, toward the true being, toward perfection, seem quieter than the passionate souls because the flame of their fervor cannot always be seen. In argument, for example, they will not shout and wave their arms. But I assure you, they are nevertheless burning with subdued fires. Hermann Hesse
ffefcaa One of the disadwantages of school and learning, he thought dreamily, was that the mind seemed to have the tendency too see and represent all things as though they were flat and had only two dimensions. This, somehow, seemed to render all matters of intellect shallow and worthless... Hermann Hesse
50b7012 bysh z ykh qrn rwp khry jz skhtn mshyn nkhrd. khnwn, mqdr dqyq brwty khh bry khshtn admy lzm st r my dnd, m nmy dnd chTwr ykh s`t khwshbkht bshd. Hermann Hesse
879a629 Knowledge can be conveyed, but not wisdom. It can be found, it can be lived, it is possible to be carried by it, miracles can be performed with it, but it cannot be expressed in words and taught. wisdom Hermann Hesse
b1d889a I don't know whether my life has been useless and merely a misunderstanding, or whether it has a meaning. Hermann Hesse
d341050 All the women of this fevered night, all that I had danced with, all whom I had kindled or who have kindled me, all whom I had courted, all who had clung to me with longing, all whom I had followed with enraptured eyes were melted together and had become one, the one whom I held in my arms. Hermann Hesse
cf95e7b His way had therefore come full circle, or rather had taken the form of an ellipse or a spiral, following as ever no straight unbroken line, for the rectilinear belongs only to Geometry and not to Nature and Life. life lines nature Hermann Hesse
c5f72bf Every natural form is latent within us, originates in the soul whose essence is eternity, whose essence we cannot know but which most often intimates itself to us as the power to love and create. Hermann Hesse
a8e9c80 That is the way leaves fall around a tree in autumn, a tree unaware of the rain running down its sides, of the sun or the frost, and of life gradually retreating inward. The tree does not die. It waits. Hermann Hesse
bfa6268 Yes, what we are doing is probably mad, and probably it is good and necessary all the same. It is not a good thing when man overstrains his reason and tries to reduce to rational order matters that are susceptible of rational treatment. Then there arise ideals such as those of the Americans or of the Bolsheviks. Both are extraordinarily rational, and both lead to a frightful oppression and impoverishment of life, because they simplify it so.. Hermann Hesse
de9b74c I feel life trembling within me, in my tongue, on the soles of my feet, in my desire or my suffering, I want my soul to be a wandering thing, able to move back into a hundred forms, I want to dream myself into priests and wanderers, female cooks and murderers, children and animals, and, more than anything else, birds and trees; that is necessary, I want it, I need it so I can go on living, and if sometime I were to lose these possibilities .. freedom life living possibility Hermann Hesse
ff782e1 I had grown accustomed to living within myself. I was resigned to the knowledge that I had lost all appreciation of the outside world, that the loss of its bright colors was an inseparable part of the loss of my childhood, and that, in a certain sense, one had to pay for freedom and maturity of the soul with the renunciation of this cherished aura. But now, overjoyed, I saw that all this had only been buried or clouded over and that it was .. Hermann Hesse
6b0e8dd She stood a moment before my eyes, clearly and painfully, loved and deeply woven into my destiny; then fell away again in a deep oblivion, at a half regretted distance. Hermann Hesse
f753ed0 People like you and me are quite lonely really but we still have each other, we have the secret satisfaction of being different, of rebelling, of desiring the unusual. Hermann Hesse
ecb0d30 Novelists when they write novels tend to take an almost godlike attitude toward their subject, pretending to a total comprehension of the story, a man's life, which they can therefore recount as God Himself might, nothing standing between them and the naked truth, the entire story meaningful in every detail. I am as little able to do this as the novelist is, even though my story is more important to me than any novelist's is to him - for th.. hermann-hesse human-beings novel religion story Hermann Hesse
7cd845b Even the wolf has two, and more than two, souls in his wolf's breast, and he who desires to be a wolf falls into the same forgetfulness as the man who sings: "If I could be a child once more!" He who sentimentally sings of blessed childhood is thinking of the return to nature and innocence and the origin of things, and has quite forgotten that these blessed children are beset with conflict and complexities and capable of all suffering. Ther.. Hermann Hesse
3398bb1 Haller's sickness of the soul, as I now know, is not the eccentricity of a single individual, but the sickness of the times themselves, the neurosis of that generation to which Haller belongs, a sickness, it seems, that by no means attacks the weak and worthless only but, rather, precisely those who are strongest in spirit and richest in gifts. steppenwolf Hermann Hesse
055d10a Excerpt from Ursula K Le Guin's speech at National Book Awards Hard times are coming, when we'll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We'll need writers who can remember freedom - poets, visionaries - realists of a larger reality. Right now, we need writers who know.. profiteerng publishers writing Ursula K Le Guin
dd93192 Privacy, in fact, was almost as desirable for physics as it was for sex. privacy Ursula K. Le Guin
9a370a0 I think what you mostly do when you find you really are alone is to panic. You rush to the opposite extreme and pack yourself into groups - clubs, teams, societies, types. You suddenly start dressing exactly like the others. It's a way of being invisible. The way you sew the patches on the holes in your blue jeans becomes incredibly important. If you do it wrong you're not with it. That's a peculiar phrase, you know? With it. With what? Wit.. Ursula K. Le Guin
bf33e30 And I saw then again, and for good, what I had always been afraid to see, and had pretended not to see in him: that he was a woman as well as a man. Any need to explain the sources of that fear vanished with the fear; what I was left with was, at last, acceptance of him as he was. Ursula K. Le Guin
e05fb0e Men call women faithless, changeable, and though they say it in jealousy of their own ever-threatened sexual honor, there is some truth in it. We can change our life, our being; no matter what our will is, we are changed. As the moon changes yet is one, so we are virgin, wife, mother, grandmother. For all their restlessness, men are who they are; once they put on the man's toga they will not change again; so they make a virtue of that rigid.. sexes Ursula K. Le Guin
798274a Saying those words made a sharp, quick panic rise up in her, an aching pain that had her throat closing. "You left me," she repeated. Maybe it was only out of blind terror at the abyss opening up again around her, but she whispered, "I have no one left. No one." depression pg276 rowan-whitethorn Sarah J. Maas
1b01515 Aedion - every breath she took seemed to echo his name. Aedion, Aedion, Aedion. aelin-ashryver-galathynius cousins queen-of-shadows Sarah J. Maas
a1e3b27 You look rather pretty today, Sarah J. Maas
0ef326e I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. - Aelin, to Lysandra Sarah J. Maas
e0849c0 I will consider it. - Endymion, Princess Sellene Sarah J. Maas
edd2c8b Lorcan had been wrong. He had been so wrong. And he could not entirely regret it, not if Elide was safe, but ... Aelin had refused to count. Cairn had unleashed his full strength on her with that whip, and she had refused to give them the satisfaction of counting. "Where" Sarah J. Maas
c9eddf4 All those years, what I did for them... And they didn't try to stop you from taking me." There it was, the giant pain that cracked me in two if I thought about it too long." Sarah J. Maas
8ae0b69 I smiled at the thought - at how handsome they would be together. If the warrior ever stopped loving Mor. I doubted it. Azriel would likely love More until he was a whisper of darkness between the stars. elain mor Sarah J. Maas