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Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?

Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star

So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing.

Clarice Lispector

#lit #clarice lispector #lispector #the hour of the star

Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn’t it such a relief to have somebody say that?

Kurt Vonnegut

#kurt vonnegut #a man without a country #vonnegut #lit

The sky is clouding over. And here now my old anguish; there, in the depth of my body, like a nasty wound that each movement irritates. I know its name. It is fear of the eternal solitude, apprehension that there won’t be any answer.

Albert Camus

#albert camus #camus #lit

Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

Kurt Vonnegut

#kurt vonnegut #lit #vonnegut #a man without a country

paveo

Up in the woods

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

Mary Oliver

#mary oliver #lit #poetry #oliver

Here and gone. That’s what it is to be human, I think—to be both someone and no one at once, to hold a particular identity in the world (our names, our place of origins, our family and affectional ties) and to feel that solid set of ties also capable of dissolution, slipping away, as we become moments of attention.

Mark Doty

#mark doty #doty #lit #poetry #still life with oysters and lemon

We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm - yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.

E.M. Forster

#e. m. forster #e.m. forster #forster #lit #a room with a view

Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.

Alan Wilson Watts

#alan watts #alan wilson watts #watts #lit

You don’t ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. It’s all about survival; it’s all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed to death or keep it in.

Nick Hornby

#Nick Hornby #hornby #lit #How to Be Good

The whole life is a succession of dreams. My ambition is to be a conscious dreamer, that is all.

Swami Vivekananda

#swami vivekananda #lit #vivekananda

She wants to know if I love her, that’s all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet.

Jonathan Safran Foer

#jonathan safran foer #lit #foer #extremely loud and incredibly close

Cold sinks in, there to stay. And people, they'll leave you, sure. There's no return to what was and no way back. There's just emptiness all around, and you in it, like singing up from the bottom of a well, like nothing else, until you harm yourself, until you are a mad dog biting yourself for sympathy. Because there is no relenting.

Louise Erdrich

#louise erdrich #erdrich #the bingo palace #lit

It’s a question I often ask myself: what would I do with me? And I don’t know the answer. I don’t know what I’d do, except run away.

Alexander Masters

#alexander masters #masters #lit #stuart: a life backwards

And what is happy? It is a going always on. There is something better to be done than I have done, and spurred by the fair delusion of progress, I will seek to progress, to whip myself on, to more and more- to learning. Always.

Sylvia Plath

#lit #sylvia plath #plath #the unabridged journals of sylvia plath #the journals of sylvia plath

It's possible to understand the world from studying a leaf. You can comprehend the laws of aerodynamics, mathematics, poetry and biology through the complex beauty of such a perfect structure. It's also possible to travel the whole globe and learn nothing.

Joy Harjo

#joy harjo #harjo #lit #poetry

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