The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword

“It is likely I will die next to a pile of things I was meaning to read.” ― Lemony Snicket

[themightypens]

Oh do you have time         to linger                 for just a little while                        out of your busy and very important day         for the goldfinches                 that have gathered                        in a field of thistles for a musical battle,         to see who can sing                 the highest note,                        or the lowest, or the most expressive of mirth,         or the most tender?                 Their strong, blunt beaks                        drink the air as they strive         melodiously                 not for your sake                        and not for mine and not for the sake of winning         but for sheer delight and gratitude—                 believe us, they say,                        it is a serious thing just to be alive         on this fresh morning                 in the broken world.                        I beg of you, do not walk by         without pausing                 to attend to this                        rather ridiculous performance. It could mean something. It could mean everything. It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote: You must change your life.

Invitation, Mary Oliver

[themightypens]

She lived in perfect idleness and contentment, growing each day more freckled and more rooted in peace

Lolly Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner

[themightypens]

Adventures are all very well in their place, but there's a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain.

Neil Gaiman, Stardust

[themightypens]

At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough.

Toni Morrison, Tar Baby (via themightypens)

[themightypens]

And, too ignorant to be scared, too young to be awed, Tristran Thorn passed beyond the fields we know... ...and into Faerie.

Neil Gaiman, Stardust

[themightypens]

'You know that time is not coming back, don't you? The friends, the freedom, the possibilities?' 'You're supposed to be cheering me up,' says Donna. Ibrahim nods. 'Let it go. Remember it as a happy time. You were at the top of the mountain, and now you're in a valley. It will happen to you a number of times.' 'So what do I do now?' 'You climb the next mountain, of course.'

Richard Osman, The Man Who Died Twice

[themightypens]

Wallace wondered what would happen if they never stopped. Perhaps if they went far enough, Wallace would drift away into nothingness, leaving all the pieces of him behind. Not a Husk. Not a ghost. Just motes of dust along a stretch of mountain road, ashes spread as if he'd mattered. And maybe he had. Not to the world at large, not to very many people in the grand scheme of things, but here in this place?...Yes, he thought maybe he mattered after all, a lesson in the unexpected. Wasn't that the point? Wasn't that the great answer to the mystery of life? To make the most of what you have while you have it, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. In death, Wallace had never felt more alive.

T. J. Klune, Under the Whispering Door

[themightypens]

What I say is, a town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it's got a bookstore, it knows it's not foolin' a soul.

Neil Gaiman, American Gods

[themightypens]

The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, 'I was wrong.'

Sydney J Harris

[themightypens]

My mother took my hand. 'I know. We all knew, Jovis. When you're young, you think you can change the world. You think you can bend it to your will. When you're old, you learn to change your small corner of it and live with the rest.'

Andrea Stewart, The Bone Shard Emperor

[themightypens]

As I dig for wild orchids in the autumn fields, it is the deeply-bedded root that I desire, not the flower.

Izumi Shikibu (974 - 1034)

Translated by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani

[themightypens]

'What do you want for yourself?' he'd asked, and Henry considered saying my parents' pride, but that didn't seem like a good answer, so he'd said the next truest thing -- that he honestly wasn't sure. That he'd blinked and somehow years had gone by, and everyone else had carved their trenches, paved their paths, and he was still standing in a field, uncertain where to dig.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, V. E. Schwab

[themightypens]

They will stay the night in a local inn, and for the first time in her life, Adeline will sleep in a foreign bed, and wake to foreign sounds and smells, and there will be a moment, as brief as a yawn, when she won't know where she is, and her heart will quicken -- first with fear, and then with something else. Something she does not have the words for yet. And by the time they return home to Villon, she will already be a different version of herself. A room with the windows all thrown wide, eager to let in the fresh air, the sunlight, the spring.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue,  V. E. Schwab

[themightypens]

Somewhere a black bear has just risen from sleep and is staring down the mountain. All night in the brisk and shallow restlessness of early spring I think of her, her four black fists flicking the gravel, her tongue like a red fire touching the grass, the cold water. There is only one question: how to love this world. I think of her rising like a black and leafy ledge to sharpen her claws against the silence of the trees. Whatever else my life is with its poems and its music and its glass cities, it is also this dazzling darkness coming down the mountain, breathing and tasting; all day I think of her— her white teeth, her wordlessness, her perfect love.

Mary Oliver, Spring

[themightypens]

"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all those who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

J. R. R. Tolkein, The Fellowship of the Ring

[themightypens]

She was not a slowpoke grownup. She was a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting she had to find out what happened next.

Beverly Cleary (via themightypens)

[themightypens]

In the name of the Bee - And of the Butterfly - And of the Breeze - amen!

Emily Dickinson