#allen

Music is a wind that blows away the years, memories, and fear, that crouching animal I carry inside me. ↗

— Isabel Allende

#island-beneath-the-sea #music #zarité #music

Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen. For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last blockon a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage. For each person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves. ↗

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#flow #happiness #experience

The music had ceased. Alex walked over to the gramophone, wound it up again, and put on more blues, a woman singing this time, gay and sad at once, like a stranded angel who had traded holiness for humanity but remembered what it used to be like to know God. ↗

— Barbara Hambly

#fallen-angel #music #singer #singing #music

There is a tendency at every important but difficult crossroad to pretend that it's not really there. ↗

— Bill McKibben

#environment #judgement #nature

When a person boldly declares, 'You can't,' he might as well add on, 'can you?', knowing that this spoken roadblock only serves to fuel a challenge in naturally stubborn souls. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#dare #impossibility #richelle #richelle-goodrich #roadblock

Sir, no insult intended, but you said to me once that you don’t like kiss-asses and that you’d rather work with people challenging your perceptions. ↗

— Mario Stinger

#insults #nature

She watched with morbid fascination as they gathered at the stumps at the ends of the man's wrists, the old scar tissue the only place on him unclaimed by Fener, but the paths the sprites took to those stumps touched not a single tattooed line. The flies dance a dance of avoidance - but for all that, they were eager to dance. ↗

— Steven Erikson

#book-of-the-fallen #deadhouse-gates #laws-of-nature #life #malazan

No, no, because she's a mental adolescent, and being romantic, she has a death wish. So, for a brief moment of passion,she completely abandons all responsibilities. ↗

— Woody Allen

#woody-allen #romantic

The alley and the music all fell away, and there was nothing but her and the rain and Jace, his hands on her. . . He made a noise of surprise, low in his throat, and dug his fingers into the thin fabric of her tights. Not unexpectedly, they ripped, and his wet fingers were suddenly on the bare skin of her legs. Not to be outdone, Clary slid her hands under the hem of his soaked shirt, and let her fingers explore what was underneath: the tight, hot skin over his ribs, the ridges of his abdomen, the scars on his back. This was uncharted territory for her, but it seemed to be driving him crazy: he was moaning softly against her mouth, kissing her harder and harder, as if it would never be enough, not quite enough — ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#clary-fray #jace-lightwood #music

Hey," said Jace. who was sitting on an overturned speaker, looking at his cellphone, "do you want to see a photo of Alec and Magnus in Berlin?" "Not really," said Simon. "Magnus is wearing lederhosen." "And yet, still no. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#jace-lightwood #lederhosen #simon-lewis #city