June 2012
“i thought i was going to die. i wanted to die. and i thought if i was going to die i would die with you. someone like you, young as i am, i saw so many dying near me in the last year. i didn’t feel scared. i certainly wasn’t brave just now. i thought to myself, we have this villa this grass, we should have lain down together, you in my arms, before we died. i wanted to touch that bone at your neck, collarbone, it’s like a small hard wing under your skin. i wanted to place my fingers against it. i’ve always liked flesh the colour of rivers and rocks or like the brown eye of a susan, do you know what that flower is? have you seen them? i am so tired, kip, i want to sleep. i want to sleep under this tree, put my eye against your collarbone i just want to close my eyes without thinking of others, want to find the crook of a tree and climb into it and sleep. what a careful mind! to know which wire to cut. how did you know? you kept saying i don’t know i don’t know, but you did. right? don’t shake, you have to be a still bed for me, let me curl up as if you were a good grandfather i could hug, i love the word ‘curl,’ such a slow word, you can’t rush it…”
—the english patient, michael ondaatje
“You can never have too much sky. You can fall asleep and wake up drunk on sky, and sky can keep you safe when you are sad.”
—Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (via audreylostinparis)
“People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it’s simply necessary to love.”
—Claude Monet (via audreylostinparis)
“If you don’t get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don’t want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.”
—Socrates (via magicclouds)
“Everything is a self-portrait. A diary. Your whole drug history’s in a strand of your hair. Your fingernails. The forensic details. The lining of your stomach is a document. The calluses on your hand tell all your secrets. Your teeth give you away. Your accent. The wrinkles around your mouth and eyes. Everything you do shows your hand.”
—Chuck Palahniuk (via spinals)
Play
“I did not know why I destroyed those dolls. But I did know that nobody ever asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Had any adult with the power to fulfill my desires taken me seriously and asked me what I wanted, they would have known that I did not want to have anything to own, or to possess any object. I wanted rather to feel something on Christmas day. The real question would have been, ‘Dear Claudia, what experience would you like on Christmas?’ I could have spoken up, ‘I want to sit on the low stool in Big Mama’s kitchen with my lap full of lilacs and listen to Big Papa play his violin for me alone.’ The lowness of the stool made for my body, the security and warmth of Big Mama’s kitchen, the smell of the lilacs, the sound of the music, and, since it would be good to have all of my senses engaged, the taste of a peach, perhaps, afterward.”
—The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
Psychologists Discover How People Subconsciously Become Their Favorite Fictional Characters - Medical Daily →
medicaldaily.com
Psychologists have discovered that while reading a book or story, people are prone to subconsciously adopt their behavior, thoughts, beliefs and internal responses to that of fictional characters as if they were their own.
Experts have dubbed this subconscious phenomenon ‘experience-taking,’ where people actually change their own behaviors and thoughts to match those of a fictional character that they can identify with.
“It was my entrance into the radiance of imagination.”
— Patti Smith, Just Kids (via starswithplanets)
