The Tigers Have Found Me And I Don't Care

I'm confessing

[quotemadness]

“I’d say go to hell, but I never want to see you again.”

— Sylvia Plath

[goodreadss]

“It is so much safer not to feel, not to let the world touch me.”

— Sylvia Plath

[quotemadness]

“I hate most people. And I don’t want to, it’s an awful way to be. But the human race gives me no comfort. I find myself turning to books and films for comfort still. It’s repulsive, because one’s life consists of people, not things.”

— Morrissey (via quotemadness)

[quotemadness]

“Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily.”

— Lemony Snicket (via quotemadness)

[thehopefulquotes]

To be kind is more important than to be right. Many times, what people need is not a brilliant mind that speaks but a special heart that listens.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

[lesbianherstorian]

excerpts from an interview with kathee muzin about the first time she fell in love with another woman, published in the montreal gazette, december 1991

[hip-hop4real-blog1]

[lovingsylvia]

Sylvia Plath’s grave in the Heptonstall parish churchyard of St Thomas the Apostle, the new St Thomas á Becket churchyard; near Ted Hughes’ birthplace Mytholmroyd in West Yorkshire, England; photographed especially for me by my friend Kevin in March 2017.

I‘m going to take the next ones myself sometime this year! :)

***

Sylvia Plath‘s epitaph reads:

“Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted.”

***

Where does this quote come from?

According to Ted Hughes, the quote comes from the Hindu sciptures, the Bhagavad Gītā (“Song of God”), written in the period between 200 BCE and 200 AD. However, it is more likely that this quote is from the 16th century Chinese novelist and poet Wu Cheng'en. It can be found in his novel Journey to the West that is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature, originally published anonymously in the 1590s during the Ming Dynasty. In English-speaking countries, the tale is also often known simply as “Monkey”,  from the title of a popular, abridged translation by Arthur Waley or as “Adventures of the Monkey God”, “Monkey: Folk Novel of China”, and “The Adventures of Monkey”. And in a further abridged version for children, “Dear Monkey”. In the Penguin Classics Edition, the quote can be found on page 23. It is spoken by a Patriarch who is teaching Monkey the way of a long life.

Here is the full quotation: “To spare and tend the vital powers, this and nothing else is sum and total of all magic, secret and profane. All is comprised in these three, spirit, breath and soul; guard them closely, screen them well; let there be no leak. Store them within the frame; that is all that can be learnt, and all that can be taught. I would have you mark the tortoise and snake, locked in tight embrace. Locked in tight embrace, the vital powers are strong; even in the midst of fierce flames the Golden Lotus may be planted, the five elements compounded and transposed, and put to new use. When that is done, be which you please, Buddha or Immortal” .

[itallstartedwithakiss]

[90sjenniferconnelly]

“I’m gone. Long gone. Like a turkey in the corn.”

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) dir. David Lynch

[sylviaplathquotes]

“Let’s face it: I’m scared, scared and frozen. First, I guess I’m afraid for myself… the old primitive urge for survival. It’s getting so I live every moment with terrible intensity. It all flowed over me with a screaming ache of pain… remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted. When you feel that this may be good-bye, the last time, it hits you harder.”

— Sylvia Plath (via sylviaplathquotes)

[quotemadness]

“I am strangely tired, not from having talked so much but at the mere thought of what I still have to say.”

— Albert Camus

[quotemadness]

“I wanted it so much. I don’t know why I wanted it so much.”

— Ernest Hemingway

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

“You are the one and only person in the whole world that I have wanted to believe in me,”

— Nikos Kazantzakis, from a letter to Galatea Kazantzaki c. December 1922

[notesfromtheundergroundman]

“And what capacity for the very most contradictory feelings!”

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground (via notesfromtheundergroundman)

[quotemadness]

“I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.”

— Phillip Pullman

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

“You have no idea how much I’m suffering.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis, from a letter to Galatea Kazantzaki wr. c. May 1922