By Category: Life

“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition thats troublesome.”

-Isaac Asimov

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“Life begins when you accept your fate.”

-Shattered Faith, Bad Religion

Recommended by digitalmartyr.

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“What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough: for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.”

-La vida es sueño (Life Is But a Dream), Pedro Calderón de la Barca

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“I have been dying since October. I wake up at night so afraid, so terrified, that I couldn't be that afraid while awake. It has taken its toll. I have come to hate this life in this system of things. I have come to have no hope.”

-Mark O. Barton

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“But Molly pushed him aside and went up to the unicorn, scolding her as though she were a strayed milk cow. 'Where have you been?' Before the whiteness and the shining horn, Molly shrank to a shilling beetle, but this time it was the unicorn's old dark eyes that looked down.

'I am here now,' she said at last.

Molly laughed with her lips flat. 'And what good is it to me that you're here now? Where were you twenty years ago, ten years ago? How dare you, how dare you come to me now, when I am this?' With a flap of her hand she summed herself up: barren face, desert eyes, and yellowing heart. 'I wish you had never come, why do you come now?' The tears began to slide down the sides of her nose.”

-The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

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“Prince Lir stood between her body and the Bull, weaponless, but with his hands up as though they still held a sword and shield. Once more in that endless night, the prince said, 'No.'

He looked very foolish, and he was about to be trampled flat. The Red Bull could not see him, and would kill him without ever knowing that he had been in the way. Wonder and love and great sorrow shook Schmendrick the Magician then, and came together inside him, and filled him, filled him until he felt himself brimming and flowing with something that was none of these. He did not believe it, but it came to him anyway, as it had touched him twice before and left him more barren than he had been. This time, there was too much of it for him to hold: it spilled through his skin, sprang from his fingers and toes, welled up equally in his eyes and his hair and the hollows of his shoulders. There was too much to hold, too much ever to use; and still he found himself weeping with the pain of his impossible greed. He thought, or said, or sang, 'I did not know that I was so empty, to be so full.'”

-The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

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“Living is easy with eyes closed,
misunderstanding all you see.
It's getting hard to be someone
but it all works out,
it doesn't matter much to me.”

-Strawberry Fields Forever, The Beatles

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“There are places I remember all my life,
Though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain.
All these places have their moments
Of lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I loved them all.”

-There Are Places I Remember, The Beatles

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“Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back.”

-Krapp's Last Tape, Samuel Beckett

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“I don't know, perhaps it's a dream, all a dream, that would surprise me, I'll wake, in the silence, and never sleep again, it will be I, or dream, dream again, dream of a silence, a dream silence, full of murmurs, I don't know, that's all words, never wake, all words, there's nothing else, you must go on, that's all I know, they're going to stop, I know that well, I can feel it, they're going to abandon me, it will be the silence, for a moment, a good few moments, or it will be mine, the lasting one, that didn't last, that still lasts, it will be I, you must go on, I can't go on, you must go on, I'll go on, you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it's done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.”

-The Unnamable, Samuel Beckett

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“Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late!”

-Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett

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“Alice, the world is full of ugly things that you can't change
Pretend it's not that way
It's my idea of faith.”

-Alice Childress, Ben Folds Five

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“While she cut the mushrooms, she cried more than she had at the grave, the most so far, because she found the saddest thing of all to be the simple truth of her capacity to move on.”

-Willful Creatures, Aimee Bender

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“Why torture yourself when life will do it for you.”

-Big Girls Don't Cry... They Get Even [movie]

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“This was not a faerie tale. This was not the movies. This was life. It hurt more. It was excruciating. It was excruciatingly beautiful.”

-Violet and Claire, Francesca Lia Block

Recommended by trillianphoenix.

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“'My pain is ugly, Angel Juan. I feel like I have so much ugly pain,' says Witch Baby in a dream.

'Everyone does,' Angel Juan says. 'My mother says that pain is hidden in everyone you see. She says try to imagine it like big bunches of flowers that everyone is carrying around with them. Think of your pain like a bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one.'”

-Witch Baby, Francesca Lia Block

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“Life is a burden to me, nothing gives me any pleasure. I only find sadness in everything around me. It is very difficult because the ways of those with whom I live, and probably always shall live, are as different from mine as moonlight is from sunlight.”

-Napoleon Bonaparte

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“The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.”

-Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

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“Why love the woman who is your wife? Her nose breathes in the air of the world I know; therefore I love her nose. Her ears hear music that I might sing the whole night through; therefore I love her ears. Her eyes delight in seasons of the land; and so I love those eyes. Her tongue knows quince, peach, chokeberry, mint and lime; I love to hear it speaking. Because her flesh knows heat, cold, affliction, I know fire, snow, and pain. Shared and once again shared experience. Billions of prickling textures. Cut one sense away, cut part of life away. Cut two senses, life halves itself on the instant. We love what we know, we love what we are.”

-Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury

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“You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, 'Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness.' You call yourself a free spirit, a 'wild thing,' and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself. ”

-Breakfast at Tiffany's [movie]

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“Perhaps life needs to be deciphered like a cryptogram. Secret staircases, frames from which the paintings quickly slip aside and vanish (giving way to an archangel bearing a sword or to those who must forever advance), buttons which must be indirectly pressed to make an entire room move sideways or vertically, or immediately change all its furnishings; we may imagine the mind's greatest adventure as a journey of this sort to the paradise of pitfalls.”

-Nadja, André Breton

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“It is a truth universally acknowledged that the moment one area of your life starts going okay, another part of it falls spectacularly to pieces.”

-Bridget Jones's Diary [movie]

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“I never knew what it exactly means: 'to pray'. Although there has been a time that I knew all prayers, litanies and formulas of the catholic religion by heart. I quickly realised that, just the 'saying' of these texts wasn't 'praying', but that there had to be more to do with it, and I didn't know what. I stopped thinking about it. Millions of hale mary's I've recited, but not one did I 'pray'. 'Praying helps you get at ease,' my grandmother said. I get at ease by watching the flames in an open fire. That 'praying', just like staring into the flames, serves no purpose and leads to nothing, now is a part of my 'knowledge of life', a heritage of my years in the Tjideng prisoner camp.”

-Bezonken Rood, Jeroen Brouwers

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“It is a brave act to despise death; but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valor to dare to live.”

-Sir Thomas Browne

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“Bottom line is, even if you see them coming, you're not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So, what are we, helpless? Puppets? Nah. The big moments are gonna come, you can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that counts. That's when you find out who you are.”

-Buffy the Vampire Slayer [television show]

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