and what of it.

"Angry, and half in love with you, and tremendously sorry, I turned away."

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 00:20:56 -0500

““Angry, and half in love with you, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.””

- F. Scott Fitzgerald (via christeenuhjoy)

"Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life."

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 16:34:54 -0400

“Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.”

- Langston Hughes (via sorakeem)

"I think it’s great for two people to be together. That is a good number. I think, that to keep it..."

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 20:42:35 -0400

“I think it’s great for two people to be together. That is a good number. I think, that to keep it alive though, you can’t spend every day together. It wears out the magic, Love means nothing to me if it’s not fortified with fierce, painful longing, brief explosive instances of furious passion and intimacy and then a sad parting for a time. In that way, you can give your life to it and still have a life of your own. I think some couples spend too much time together. They flatten out the potential for experience by constant closeness. Passion builds over time like steam. Let it rage until it’s exhausted and then leave it alone to let it build up again. Why can’t love be insane and distorted? How can it be vital if it has the same threshold as normal day-to-day experience? Why can’t you write burning letters and let your nocturnal self smolder with desire for one who is not there? Why not let the days before you see her be excruciating and ferment in your mind so on the day you go to the airport to pick her up, you’re nearly sick with anticipation? And then when desire shows the first sign of contentment, throw it back in its cage and let it slowly build itself back into a state of starved fury. Then when you are together, it all matters. So that when you look into her eyes, you lose your balance, so that when she touches you, it feels like you have never been touched before. When she says your name, you think it was she who named you. When she has gone, you bury your face in the pillow to smell her hair and you lie awake at night remembering your face in her neck, her breathing and the amazing smell of her skin. Your eyes go wet because you want her so bad and miss her so much. Now that is worth the miles and the time. That matches the inferno of life. Otherwise you poison each other with your presence day after day as you drag each other through the inevitable mundane aspects of your lives. That is the slow death that I see slapped on faces everywhere I go. It’s part of the world’s sadness that’s more empty than cold, poorly lit rooms in cities of the American night.”

- Henry Rollins (via thatkindofwoman)

"I hold onto these postcards, self-indulgent though it may be, to remind myself that discomfort and..."

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 13:51:09 -0400

“I hold onto these postcards, self-indulgent though it may be, to remind myself that discomfort and fear and loneliness are often the first signs of growth.”

- Lorraine Barry, Dear female students: Stop writing about men.

believermag: From an interview with playwright and actor...

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 11:54:50 -0400

believermag:

From an interview with playwright and actor Wallace Shawn, conducted by Duncan MacMillan, in the September 2010 issue of the Believer. Duncan asks Shawn whether there were moments when he lost faith in theater.

"Just because you’re offended, doesn’t mean you’re right."

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:43:27 -0500

“Just because you’re offended, doesn’t mean you’re right.”

- Ricky Gervais (via sirmitchell)

"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing..."

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:55:54 -0500

“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.”

- John Steinbeck, East of Eden (via sirmitchell)

wrlittle: Justin Vernon on “Skinny Love.” via catysmith

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:38:43 -0500

wrlittle:

Justin Vernon on “Skinny Love.”

via catysmith

FATHER JOHN MISTY: “Things to Do on a Boring Tokyo Night in a Hotel” by Richard Brautigan...

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 11:40:45 -0500

FATHER JOHN MISTY: “Things to Do on a Boring Tokyo Night in a Hotel” by Richard Brautigan...:

fatherjohnmisty:

“Things to Do on a Boring Tokyo Night in a Hotel”

by Richard Brautigan

Have dinner by yourself.
That’s always a lot of fun.

Wander aimlessly around the hotel.
This is a huge hotel, so there’s lots of space
to wander aimlessly around.

Go up and down the elevator for no…

"I am just going to trust you with everything in me. I see now that it’s the only reason to be here...."

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 18:22:31 -0400

“I am just going to trust you with everything in me. I see now that it’s the only reason to be here. After kissing you, I cannot remember what it was like to kiss any other woman. At this point I am not sure if I ever have.”

- Henry Rollins (via notarobotbutaghost)

"You say that you love rain, but you open your umbrella when it rains. You say that you love the sun,..."

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 00:10:55 -0400

“You say that you love rain, but you open your umbrella when it rains. You say that you love the sun, but you find a shadow spot when the sun shines. You say that you love the wind, but you close your windows when wind blows. This is why I am afraid; You say that you love me too.”

- William Shakespeare (via astronautes)

"To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent..."

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 19:45:10 -0400

“To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such an autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself.”

- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (as ever, our standards should be both different and more demanding than those of others)

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try..."

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 19:35:56 -0400

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche (via raindropsheartbeat)

"I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and..."

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 18:22:33 -0400

“I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance. That is my religion, and every day I am sorely, grossly, heinously and deeply offended, wounded, mortified and injured by a thousand different blasphemies against it. When the fundamental canons of truth, honesty, compassion and decency are hourly assaulted by fatuous bishops, pompous, illiberal and ignorant priests, politicians and prelates, sanctimonious censors, self-appointed moralists and busy-bodies, what recourse of ancient laws have I? None whatever. Nor would I ask for any. For unlike these blistering imbeciles my belief in my religion is strong and I know that lies will always fail and indecency and intolerance will always perish.”

- Stephen Fry (via shootcocacola)

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 18:35:18 -0400

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

- Thomas Edison (via ummhello)

Without pain one remains clueless about life. If one seeks to avoid pain when important learning...

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 18:16:50 -0400

Without pain one remains clueless about life. If one seeks to avoid pain when important learning experiences occur, nothing is learned; and the same problems and patterns inevitably repeat themselves over and over. Without the pain how else is one to integrate the “unknown” into their known, and live expanded, integrated in a fuller life?

totrulyexist

"But the question is whether it is necessary to find oneself."

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 22:18:47 -0400

“But the question is whether it is necessary to find oneself.”

- Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (Thousand Plateaus)

"Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself..."

Sat, 14 May 2011 23:39:09 -0400

“Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play… I tell you, that it is on things like these that our lives depend.”

- Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

Understand, I’ll slip quietly away from the noisy crowdwhen I see the palestars rising, blooming,...

Fri, 13 May 2011 19:32:00 -0400

Understand, I’ll slip quietly

away from the noisy crowd
when I see the pale
stars rising, blooming, over the oaks.

I’ll pursue solitary pathways
through the pale twilit meadows,
with only this one dream:
You come too.

____

Pathways.

Rainer Maria Rilke.

via totrulyexist.

Making it look easy?

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 23:27:00 -0400

Making it look easy?:

Michael Jackson re-invented the pop star, but not without falling asleep on the boards almost every night when recording. Eddy Merckx is likely the greatest man to ride a bike, and he did so 20,000 miles a year. Teddy Roosevelt is possibly our most bad ass president, yet he said life’s highest honor was to “work hard at work worth doing”.

No matter vocation or time period, they all made it look easy. It never looked like work. So the question stands, are you putting enough effort into your life and work to make it look easy?

via james nord.