It is lucky that it is not windy today. Strange, how in some way one always has the impression of being fortunate, how some chance happening, perhaps infinitesimal, stops us crossing the threshold of despair and allows us to live. It is raining, but it is not windy. Or else, it is raining and is also windy: but you know that this evening it is your turn for the supplement of soup, so that even today you find the strength to reach the evening. Or it is raining, windy and you have the usual hunger, and then you think that if you really had to, if you really felt nothing in your heart but suffering and tedium – as sometimes happens, when you really seem to lie on the bottom – well, even in that case, at any moment you want you could always go and touch the electric wire-fence, or throw yourself under the shunting trains, and then it would stop raining.
Submitted on Fri, 2010-03-05 07:58 — Gabrielle
Link to full quote: Quote #2499 from Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi
She looks at me and says, Perhaps you'll escape. Day and night, this obsession. It's not that you have to achieve anything, it's that you have to get away from where you are.
Submitted on Fri, 2010-03-05 07:44 — Gabrielle
Link to full quote: Quote #2497 from The Lover by Marguerite Duras
The photo has been cut; a third of it has been cut off. In the lower left corner there's a hand, scissored off at the wrist, resting on the grass. It's the hand of the other one, the one who is always in the picture whether seen or not. The hand that will set things down.
How could I have been so ignorant? she thinks. So stupid, so unseeing, so given over to carelessness. But without such ignorance, such carelessness, how could we live? If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next--if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions--you'd be doomed. You'd be as ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.
Drowned now--the tree as well, the sky, the wind, the clouds. All she has left is the picture. Also the story of it. Read more »
Submitted on Fri, 2010-03-05 07:29 — Gabrielle
Link to full quote: Quote #2494 from The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Often when I have been writing one of my so-called novels I have been baffled by this same problem; that is, how to describe what I call in my private shorthand--"non-being." Every day includes much more non-being than being. Yesterday for example, Tuesday the 18th of April, was [as] it happened a good day; above the average in "being." It was fine; I enjoyed writing these first pages; my head was relieved of the pressure of writing about Roger; I walked over Mount Misery and along the river; and save that the tide was out, the country, which I notice very closely always, was coloured and shared as I like--there were the willows, I remember, all plummy and soft green and purple against the blue. I also read Chaucer with pleasure; and began a book--the memoirs of Madame de la Fayette--which interested me. These separate moments of being were however embedded in many more moments of non-being. I have already forgotten what Leonard and I talked about at lunch; and at tea; although it was a good day the goodness was embedded in a kind of nondescript cotton wool. This is always so. A great part of every day is not lived consciously. Read more »
Submitted on Sat, 2010-02-27 00:46 — Gabrielle
Link to full quote: Quote #2490 from A Sketch of the Past by Virginia Woolf
...if life is the only distinction between the living and the dead - I don't think I'm alive. Not really
Submitted on Fri, 2010-02-26 20:01 — Gabrielle
Link to full quote: Quote #2485 from A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle
You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake, and perhaps as long as eternity too.
Submitted on Fri, 2010-02-26 17:11 — Gabrielle
Link to full quote: Quote #2483 from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
There's something about Sunday night that really makes you want to kill yourself. And that creepy '60 Minutes' watch that sounds like your whole life ticking away.
Submitted on Fri, 2010-02-26 11:44 — burgundybabe
Link to full quote: Quote #2479 from My So-Called Life [television show]
I became yearbook photographer because I liked the idea that I could sort of watch life without having to be part of it.
Submitted on Fri, 2010-02-26 11:42 — burgundybabe
Link to full quote: Quote #2478 from My So-Called Life [television show]
This life has been a test. If it had been an actual life, you would have received actual instructions on where to go and what to do
Submitted on Fri, 2010-02-26 11:41 — burgundybabe
Link to full quote: Quote #2477 from My So-Called Life [television show]
It just seems like, you agree to have a certain personality or something. For no reason. Just to make things easier for everyone. But when you think about it, I mean, how do you know it's even you?
Submitted on Fri, 2010-02-26 11:39 — burgundybabe
Link to full quote: Quote #2476 from My So-Called Life [television show]
