[jessiandthemexicats]

“Everybody has experienced the defeat of their lives. Nobody has a life that worked out the way they wanted it to work out. We all begin as the hero of our own dramas, in centre stage, and inevitably life moves us out of centre stage, defeats the hero, overturns the plot and the strategy and we’re left on the sidelines, wondering why we no longer have a part, or want a part, in the whole damn thing. So everybody’s experienced this. When it’s presented to us sweetly, the feeling goes from heart to heart and we feel less isolated and we feel part of the great human chain, which is really involved with the recognition of defeat.”

— Leonard Cohen on why people enjoy listening to melancholy songs. From a BBC radio interview in 2007

[miffy-berry]

The poet W.H. Auden wrote,

“Evil is always unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed, and eats at our table.”

— Jason Gideon // Criminal Minds

[reading-blog-deactivated2023082]

“Because she defines herself independently of men, the lesbian is considered unnatural, incomplete, not quite a woman—as though the essence of womanhood was to be identified with men.”

— Excerpt from the 1971 resolution passed by the National Organization for Women, quoted in Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America

[sforzinda]

Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett

[dream-of-a-reader]

Howl was wonderfully polite and long-winded in reply. He said no.

Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle (via dream-of-a-reader)

[selectedamphigories]

I understand that some people find God after misfortune, although this seems to me even more ridiculous than finding Him in good times. ‘God smote me. He must love me.’ It’s like not wanting a romantic relationship until a member of the opposite sex punches you in the face. My ‘miraculous survival’ will not change my opinion that Heaven is an idea constructed by man to help him cope with the fact that life on earth is both brutally short, and paradoxically, far too long.

Andrew Davidson (via selectedamphigories)

[chjorniy-voron]

Я вас любил: любовь еще, быть может, В душе моей угасла не совсем; Но пусть она вас больше не тревожит; Я не хочу печалить вас ничем. Я вас любил безмолвно, безнадежно, То робостью, то ревностью томим; Я вас любил так искренно, так нежно, Как дай вам бог любимой быть другим. ((translated: I loved you once; perhaps I should exclaim, My love still lingers deep within my core. But I do not want to cause you any pain, So grieve thee not for me a moment more. Silently and hopelessly I loved you, Tormented, I was too jealous and too shy. May God provide another who will love you, Just as gently and as fervently as I.))

–Я Вас Любил, А. Пушкин. ((translation Dr. Daniel Feeback))

[delta-wenus]

Mnie zawsze irytowali artyści nazbyt fanatyczni. Nie znoszę poetów, którzy są zanadto poetami i malarzy zbytnio oddanych malarstwu. Ja w ogóle domagam się od człowieka, żeby się nigdy niczemu całkowicie nie oddawał. Żądam aby był zawsze troszkę poza tym, co robi. Otóż Bruno [Schulz] był artystą bardziej od wszystkich poètes maudits i to dla tej paradoksalnej przyczyny, że wcale nie uwielbiał sztuki. Uwielbiając jest się kimś, on zaś wolał zatracić się w niej, przepaść. Ja zaś chciałem być - być sobą - sobą, nie artystą, ani ideą, ani żadnym dziełem swoim - sobą. Być powyżej sztuki, dzieła, stylu, idei.

Witold Gombrowicz, “Dziennik 1961-1966” (via delta-wenus)

[theclassicsreader]

Dreaming is not merely an act of communication (or coded communication, if you like), it is also an aesthetic activity, a game that is a value in itself. Our dreams prove that to imagine–to dream about things that have not happened–is among mankind’s deepest needs.

Milan Kundera, from The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Harper & Row, 1984)

[beccap]

But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actual work done in 8 hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work. We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don’t have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing.

Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed  (via becoming-vverevvolf)

[aevazovsky-blog]

Language is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground.

Walt Whitman (via linguisten)

[inspired-to-write]

Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist.”

Jane Smiley (via inspired-to-write)

Somehow this is the most inspiring thing I’ve read in a long time. I’m going to go write now.

(via joleebindo)

[macrolit]

It’s an universal law– intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (born on this day in 1918)

[profeminist]

“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”

— Anti-apartheid activist Steven Biko

[flamboyantlybewildered]

The person who learns language without learning culture risks becoming a fluent fool.

Si Thang Kiet Ho (via linguisten)

[antifainternational]

Genocides do not begin in gas chambers or with machetes or bullets - genocides begin with words

Bernie Farber, “Donald Trump’s racist new world order,” Now Magazine (via antifainternational)

[tori-shepherd]

[...] nie lubię już telefonów z domu i rozmów o strasznych rzeczach, gdy mówią mi, że tego dnia spadło na Osijek pięćset granatów. Straszne, mówię, a u nas dzisiaj spadł śnieg...

Dubravka Ugrešić, Amerykański fikcjonarz