After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.
— Jeffrey McDaniel, “The Quiet World” (adapted from gammasandgerunds)

(via the-final-sentence)

Why write?

Tengo said, “When I’m writing a story, I use words to transform the surrounding scene into something more natural for me. In other words, I reconstruct it. That way, I can confirm without a doubt that this person known as ‘me’ exists in the world. This is a totally different process from steeping myself in the world of math.”

“You confirm that you exist,” Fuka-Eri said.

“I can’t say I’ve been one hundred percent successful at it,” Tengo said. 

—1Q84, Haruki Murakami

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.
Emily Brontë, from “The night is darkening round me” (via the-final-sentence)

(via the-final-sentence)

Sometimes, when you don’t ask questions, it’s not because you are afraid that someone will lie to your face. It’s because you’re afraid they’ll tell you the truth. — Jodi Picoult (via shetakesflight)

(via whyimsingle)

Belief

There is a sad lesson in this: people must believe, even, if it must be so, in a lie. Without belief all is lost. And yet, like all blind faiths that seem to go so much against the evidence of reality, they in turn foster their own truths. As long as no fear is acknowledged, great things are possible and the punters are capable of feats of endurance and courage of which they never believed themselves capable.

—Death of a river guide, Richard Flanagan

[Hamlet asked, “To be or not to be?” There’s a fucking simple answer, Hamlet.
Be.
Be with passion.]
Be.
— Tim Scott, from Outrageous Fortune (thanks, ogonblickett)

Rational Mind and Knowledge

But contradicting my rational mind is a knowledge that I was never previously aware of possessing. And the rational mind can only reason against that knowledge: that the spirit of the sleeping and the dying in the rainforest roam everywhere, see everything; that we know a great deal more about ourselves than we ever normally care to admit, except at the great moments of truth in our life, in love and hate, at birth and death. Beyond these moments our life seems as if it is one great voyage away from the truths we all encompass, our past and our future, what we were and what we will return to being. And in that journey away our rational mind is our guide, our mentor. But no longer. The rational mind is not persuaded by the knowledge - my knowledge - that everything I am seeing is true, that everything I see has happened.

Death of a river guide, Richard Flanagan

You are special

Everybody is special. EVERYBODY.

Everybody is a HERO, a LOVER, a FOOL, a VILLAIN. EVERYBODY.

EVERYBODY has their STORY to tell. Even Evey Hammond.

V for Vendetta, Alan Moore & David LLoyd

The things that kill us seem
Blind to the death they give:
It is only in our dream
The things that kill us live
— Charlotte Mew, from “The Quiet House (via hateshiploveship)

(via the-final-sentence)

But in the end, back she comes. There’s no use resisting. She goes to him for amnesia, for oblivion. She renders herself up, is blotted out; enters the darkness of her own body, forgets her name. Immolation is what she wants, however briefly. To exist without boundaries. — Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin (via ephemerals)

(via kathleenjoy)