[grisnoirblanc]

Have you ever noticed how wanting burns you up from the inside out? Like one moment I am whole, but then I hear your voice on the phone and I swear to god three blocks away from here they can smell SMOKE.

Trista Mateer, Little Matchstick Girl

[grisnoirblanc]

I unconsciously sensed, again like everyone else, that you lead a double life, one side of it bright and open to the world, the other very dark, known to you alone.

Stefan Zweig, “Letter from an Unknown Woman”

[blackc0ffeeblues]

People for the most part are a waste of time. The more time you get to yourself, the better.

Henry Rollins - Black Coffee Blues

[grisnoirblanc]

Wij ontwaken weer tezamen.
Het bedmetaal en ik
wij scheiden minnaars van elkaar.
‘k Heb niemand nodig. Kijk
hoe ik de theekop stevig kus.
Ik wijdopen dode ramen
en je geur is buitenlucht.

Ramsey Nasr, Mijn wit plafond en ik

[grisnoirblanc]

Style is the answer to everything. A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing. To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it. To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art Bullfighting can be an art Boxing can be an art Loving can be an art Opening a can of sardines can be an art Not many have style Not many can keep style I have seen dogs with more style than men, although not many dogs have style. Cats have it with abundance. When Hemingway put his brains to the wall with a shotgun, that was style. Or sometimes people give you style Joan of Arc had style John the Baptist Jesus Socrates Caesar García Lorca. I have met men in jail with style. I have met more men in jail with style than men out of jail. Style is the difference, a way of doing, a way of being done. Six herons standing quietly in a pool of water, or you, naked, walking out of the bathroom without seeing me.

Charles Bukowski, Mockingbird Wish Me Luck

[grisnoirblanc]

You remember too much, 
my mother said to me recently. 
Why hold onto all that? And I said, 
Where do I put it down?

Anne Carson, The Glass Essay

[grisnoirblanc]

What makes cinema so attractive, so fascinating is that it’s not just a one plus one process. It’s a chemistry between sounds, words, ideas & image.

Wong Kar-Wai

[grisnoirblanc]

Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but “steal” some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.

Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1951-1959

[grisnoirblanc]

To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.

Albert Camus

[grisnoirblanc]

How will I drag my feet to her now?
In which land will I see her
and on which street of what city
should I ask about her?
– and if I find her house
(Let’s suppose I do)
will I ring the bell?
How should I answer?
And how will I stare at her face
as I touch the light wine
seeping between her fingers
How should I say hello…
and how will I take the pain of all these years?
Once –
twenty years ago –
in an air-conditioned train
I kissed her all night through…

Saadi Youssef, A Woman

[grisnoirblanc]

My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.

Marcel Proust

[grisnoirblanc]

One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one has given. One must have strong powers of imagination to be able to have pity. So closely is morality bound to the quality of the intellect.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

[grisnoirblanc]

I think I’ve always been half out of my shell and half in. Sometimes I can be extremely wild and sometimes I can be extremely shy. It just depends on the day.

Emile Hirsch 

[grisnoirblanc]

Say this is what the pain made of you: an open open open road. An avalanche of ‘feel it all’. Don’t let anyone ever tell you you are too much.

Andrea Gibson

[grisnoirblanc]

I want to love, but my hair smells of war and running and running.

Warsan Shire

[grisnoirblanc]

People were interesting at first. Then later, slowly but surely, all the flaws and madness would manifest themselves. I would become less and less to them; they would mean less and less to me.

Charles Bukowski, Women

[grisnoirblanc]

Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s what part of it means to be alive. But inside our heads — at least that’s where I imagine it — there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let fresh air in, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live for ever in your own private library.

Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore