#literary things

[celeryjiaozi]

louise glück

[celeryjiaozi]

jenny odell, how to do nothing

[celeryjiaozi]

jenny odell, how to do nothing

[celeryjiaozi]

It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go—let it die away—go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow—and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy.

c.s. lewis

[celeryjiaozi]

The feeling she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise. It was a fact. She had never lived. Even as a child, as far back as she could remember, she had done nothing but endure. She had believed in her own inherent goodness, her humanity, and lived accordingly, never causing one harm. Her devotion to doing things the right way had been unflagging, all her success had depended on it, and she would have gone on like that indefinitely. She didn't understand why, but faced with those decaying buildings and straggling grasses, she was nothing but a child who had never lived.

han kang, the vegetarian

[celeryjiaozi]

Why didn't this agitate me like it should have done? Instead, I became even calmer. A cool hand on my forehead. Suddenly, everything around me began to slide away, as though pulled back on an ebbing tide. The dining table, you, all the kitchen furniture. I was alone, the only thing remaining in all of infinite space.

han kang, the vegetarian (translated by deborah smith)

[celeryjiaozi]

“这个小故事曾经让我震动，因而甘心一遍遍修改多年，在改写的过程中，丝毫也没有意识到三十年过去了，爱就是不问值不值得。” (source) 

“this small story once stunned me, and thus i willingly spent many years editing it over and over again. in this process, i didn’t even realize in the slightest that thirty years had passed, love never asks if it is worth it or not.” 

eileen chang said this about lust, caution cry face emoji....that last part...

[celeryjiaozi]

When we enter a world—a new country, a new school, a party, a family or a class reunion, an army camp, a hospital—we speak the language it requires. The wisdom to adapt is the wisdom to have two languages: the one spoken to others, and the one spoken to oneself. One learns to master the public language not much differently from the way that one acquires a second language: assess the situations, construct sentences with the right words and the correct syntax, catch a mistake if one can avoid it, or else apologize and learn the lesson after a blunder. Fluency in the public language, like fluency in a second language, can be achieved with enough practice.

yiyun li, “to speak is to blunder”