#ape

All night my heart makes its way however it can over the rough ground of uncertainties, but only until night meets and then is overwhelmed by morning, the light deepening, the wind easing and just waiting, as I too wait (and when have I ever been disappointed?) for redbird to sing ↗

— Mary Oliver

#mornings #physical-landscapes #uncertainty

The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You must not edit until you get it all on paper. If you can put everything down, stream-of-consciousness, you'll do yourself a service. ↗

— Stephen Sondheim

#down #edit #everything #get #hits

You're Nash's brother. And a grim reaper?" She blinked again, and I readied myself for hysterics, or fear, or laughter. But knowing emma, I should have known better. "So you, what? Kill people? Did you kill me that day in the gym?" She clenched the headrest, her expression an odd mix of anger, awe, and confusion. But there was no disbelief. She'd seen and heard enough of the bizarre following her own temporary death that Tod's admission obviously didn't come as that much of a surprise. Or maybe Nash's Influence was still affecting her a little. "No," Tod shook his head firmly, but the corners of his mouth turned up in amusement. "I had nothing to do with that. I do kill people, then I reap their souls and take them to be recycled. But only people who are on my list." "So, you're not...dangerous?" His pouty grin deepened into something almost predatory, like the Tod I'd first met two months earlier. "Oh, I'm dangerous...." "Tod..." I warned, as Nash punched his brother in the arm, hard enough to actually hurt. "Just not to you," the reaper finished, shrugging at Emma. "I see you all the time, but you've never seen me, because Kaylee said if I got too close to you, I'd suffer eternity without my balls." "Jeez, Tod!" I shouted, my anger threatening to boil over and scald us all. The reaper leaned closer to Emma and spoke in a stage whisper. "She's not as scary as she thinks she is, but I respect her intent. ↗

— Rachel Vincent

#emma #funny #grim-reapers #tod #anger

We're not going to break anything. Don't think of it as breaking in to SeaWorld. Think of it as visiting SeaWorld in the middle of the night for free. ↗

— John Green

#margo #paper #seaworld #towns #sea

Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling. If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank - or the Company - needs - wants - insists - must have - as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time. Some of the owner men were a little proud to be slaves to such cold and powerful masters. The owner men sat in the cars and explained. You know the land is poor. You've scrabbled at it long enough, God knows. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#john-steinbeck #land #the-grapes-of-wrath #men

I have never really thought of him as a person, either.... A guy whose strings were broken, who didn’t feel the root of his leaves of grass connected to the field, a guy who was cracked. Like me. ↗

— John Green

#connection

At some point, you gotta stop looking up at the sky, or one of these days you'll look back down and see that you floated away, too. ↗

— John Green

#sky

As the many male victims of rape in the regime's disgusting jails can testify, this state-run pathology of sexual repression and sexual sadism is not content to degrade women only. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#iran #prison-rape #rape #sexual-repression #sodomy

Your arrogance doesn't cheapen me. ↗

— Toba Beta

#cheapen #pride #secret #arrogance

The church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously. And each would have been horrified to think it was a different facet of the same thing. But surely they were both intended to accomplish the same thing: the singing, the devotion, the poetry of the churches took a man out of his bleakness for a time, and so did the brothels. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#church #escape #accomplishments