Quote #2501 from On Love from Alain de Botton
Fri, 2010-03-05 08:37 — GabrielleHowever happy we may be with our partner, our love for them necessarily prevents us [unless with live in a polygamous society] from starting other romantic liaisons. But why should this constrain us if we truly loved them? Why should we feel this as a loss unless our love for them has already begun to wane? The answer perhaps lies in the uncomfortable thought that in resolving our need to love, we may not always succeed in resolving our need to long.
Quote #2500 from Sexus by Henry Miller
Fri, 2010-03-05 08:24 — GabrielleTo be joyous is to be a madman in a world of sad ghosts.
Quote #2486 from The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
Fri, 2010-02-26 20:15 — GabrielleThe unicorn was weary of human beings. Watching her companions as they slept, seeing the shadows of their dreams scurry over their faces, she would feel herself bending under the heaviness of knowing their names. Then she would run until morning to ease the ache; swifter than rain, swift as loss, racing to catch up with the time when she had known nothing at all but the sweetness of being herself.
Quote #2484 from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fri, 2010-02-26 17:45 — GabrielleHe smiled understandingly--much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.
Quote #2478 from My So-Called Life [television show]
Fri, 2010-02-26 11:42 — burgundybabeI became yearbook photographer because I liked the idea that I could sort of watch life without having to be part of it.
Quote #2469 from The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Sat, 2010-02-20 04:10 — GabrielleNow, lying on my back in bed, I imagined Buddy saying, "Do you know what a poem is, Esther?"
"No, what?" I would say,
"A piece of dust."
Then, just as he was smiling and starting to look proud, I would say, "So are the cadavers you cut up. So are the people you think you're curing. They're dust as dust as dust. I reckon a good poem lasts a whole lot longer than a hundred of those people put together.
And of course, Buddy wouldn't have any answer to that, because what I said was true. People were made of nothing so much as dust, and I couldn't see that doctoring all that dust was a bit better than writing poems people would remember and repeat to themselves when they were unhappy or sick or couldn't sleep.
Quote #2468 from Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
Sat, 2010-02-20 04:03 — GabrielleThe serious part is their bodies. I sit in the hall with the cradled telephone, and what I hear is their bodies. I don't listen much to the words but to the silences, and in the silences these bodies re-create themselves, are created by me, take form. When I am lonely for boys it's their bodies I miss. I study their hands lifting the cigarettes in the darkness of the movie theaters, the slope of a shoulder, the angle of a hip. Looking at them sideways, I examine them in different lights. My love for them is visual: that is the part of them I would like to possess. Don't move, I think. Stay like that. Let me have that. What power they have over me is held through the eyes, and when I'm tired of them it's an exhaustion partly physical, but also partly visual. Read more »
Quote #2459 from The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon
Wed, 2010-01-20 22:21 — GabrielleDizzy with the fever and with terror, I said nothing. She never really spoke to me again. I would describe her as someone who cherished normality, and I had become much too peculiar. Depression is hard on friends. You make what by the standards of the world are unreasonable demands on them, and often they don't have the resilience or the flexibility or the knowledge or the inclination to cope. If you're lucky some people will surprise you with their adaptability. You communicate what you can and hope. Slowly, I've learned to take people for who they are. Some friends can process a severe depression right up front, and some can't. Most people don't like one another's unhappiness very much. Few can cope with the idea of a depression divorced from external reality; many would prefer to think that if you're suffering, it's with reason and subject to logical resolution.
Quote #2452 from City That Does Not Sleep by Federico García Lorca
Wed, 2010-01-20 20:27 — GabriellePero no hay olvido, ni sueño:
carne viva. Los besos atan las bocas
en una maraña de venas recientes
y al que le duele su dolor le dolerá sin descanso
y al que teme la muerte la llevará sobre sus hombros.
---
But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;
flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a thicket of new veins,
and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.
Quote #2449 from Je suis le plus malade des Surrealistes by Anaïs Nin
Wed, 2010-01-20 20:03 — GabrielleI love your silences, they are like mine. You are the only being before whom I am not distressed by my own silences. You have a vehement silence, one feels it is charged with essences, it is a strangely alive silence, like a trap open over a well, from which one can hear the secret murmur of the earth itself.
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