we were never meant to survive

A place to store quotes from things I read.

[georgeorr]

She knew through what fires the soul must crawl, and with what weeping one passed over. Men spoke of how the heart broke up, but never spoke of how the soul hung speechless in the pause, the void, the terror between the living and the dead; how, all garments rent and cast aside, the naked soul passed over the very mouth of Hell.

James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain

[georgeorr]

Some particular anguish had been telling on him lately. There was nothing particularly acute or burning in it; but there came from it a breath of something permanent, eternal, a presentiment of unending years of this cold, deadening anguish, a presentiment of some eternity on ‘a square foot of space.’

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (trans. Pevear and Volokhonsky)

[georgeorr]

I know belief doesn’t come easily—but don’t be too clever about it, just give yourself directly to life, without reasoning; don’t worry—it will carry you straight to shore and set you on your feet. What shore? How do I know? I only believe that you have much life ahead of you.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (trans. Pevear and Volokhonsky)

[georgeorr]

She would undoubtedly have been among those who suffered martyrdom, and would have smiled, of course, while her breast was burned with red-hot iron tongs. She would have chosen it on purpose, and in the fourth or fifth century she would have gone to the Egyptian desert and lived there for thirty years, feeding on roots, ecstasies, and visions. She’s thirsting for just that, and demands to endure some torment for someone without delay, and if she doesn’t get this torment, she may perhaps jump out the window.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (trans. Pevear and Volokhonsky)

[georgeorr]

I merely suggested that an ‘extraordinary’ man has the right…that is, not an official right, but his own right, to allow his conscience to…step over certain obstacles .  .  . if such a one needs, for the sake of his idea, to step even over a dead body, over blood, then within himself, in his conscience, he can, in my opinion, allow himself to step over blood.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (trans. Pevear and Volokhonsky)

[georgeorr]

Do you really think I went into it headlong, like a fool? No, I went into it like a bright boy, and that’s what ruined me!

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (trans. Pevear and Volokhonsky)

[georgeorr]

It’s the evening hour when the sun, through the cracks in the wall, slides

over the floor like golden doors to something as desperate and false as prayer. As if my grief were a hall. As if it were of any use to the dead. How can this not be for you? I would have done anything.

— William Brewer, “There Is A Gold Light”

[georgeorr]

Apart from all this, I do of course have a real life. I sometimes have trouble believing in it, because it doesn't seem like the kind of life I could ever get away with, or deserve. This goes along with another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.

Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

[georgeorr]

when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish when we are alone we are afraid love will never return and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.

— Audre Lorde, “A Litany for Survival”

[georgeorr]

Here is the part where everyone was happy all the time and we were all forgiven, even though we didn’t deserve it.

Richard Siken, “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out”

[georgeorr]

Okay, so I’m the dragon. Big deal. You still get to be the hero.

Richard Siken, “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out”

[georgeorr]

How can old wounds heal while maggots linger so richly? Or a peace hold for ever built on slaughter and a magician’s trickery? I see how devoutly you wish it, for your old horrors to crumble as dust. Yet they await in the soil as white bones for men to uncover.

Kazuo Ishiguro, The Buried Giant

[georgeorr]

This is the language of waves and radiation, or how the dead speak to the living.

Don DeLillo, White Noise

[georgeorr]

He is drowning in his sadness. Drowning people often believe if they grab hold of someone else they can be saved, but it just makes you both sink faster.

Clementine von Radics, “Ten Love Letters”

[georgeorr]

The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have a presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? They are also in the ground, of course, asleep and crumbling. Perhaps we are what they dream.

Don Delillo, White Noise

[georgeorr]

"I don't hold with paddlin' with the occult," said Granny firmly. "Once you start paddlin' with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are you're believing in gods. And then you're in trouble." "But all them things exist," said Nanny Ogg. "That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em."

Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

[georgeorr]

That corpse you planted last year in your garden, Has is begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?

T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land