#deprivation

I'm always without sleep. I've got two kids. I understand sleep deprivation on a profound level. ↗

— Cate Blanchett

#deprivation #got #i #kids #level

If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desire. Instead of hiding our heads in a prayer cloth and building walls against temptation, why not get better at fulfilling desire? Salvation is for the feeble, that's what I think. I don't want salvation, I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb. If the gods would tax ecstasy, then I shall pay; however, I shall protest their taxes at each opportunity, and if Woden or Shiva or Buddha or that Christian fellow--what's his name?--cannot respect that, then I'll accept their wrath. At least I will have tasted the banquet that they have spread before me on this rich, round planet, rather than recoiling from it like a toothless bunny. I cannot believe that the most delicious things were placed here merely to test us, to tempt us, to make it the more difficult for us to capture the grand prize: the safety of the void. To fashion of life such a petty game is unworthy of both men and gods. ↗

— Tom Robbins

#desire #prayer #religion #repression #salvation

I think she's afraid to even hug me now. It's my fault, but I miss it, Andrew. I miss it so much it aches sometimes, you know?' I do know. I do know, I want to tell him, but I let him talk. And he does, with a gut-wrenching honesty that tears at my heart. 'I want to be held. Is that so wrong? I want to be held, and stroked. I want to know that someone loves me. I want to feel it on my skin.' He looks at the ceiling and exhales, then meets my eyes again. 'But nobody touches me anymore. Not even when I have a fever. Mom just hands me a thermometer now.' He drops his eyes and his ears redden. 'Even when you kiss me, you don't touch me. It's like I'm a leper or something. I can hardly keep my hands off of you, but it's not the same for you, is it? ↗

— J.H. Trumble

#loneliness #sensory-deprivation #touch-me #undesirable #word-of-your-body

We have mistaken the nature of poverty, and thought it was economic poverty. No, it is poverty of soul, deprivation of God's recreating, loving peace. ↗

— Thomas R. Kelly

#economic #god #loving #mistaken #nature

For lack of love one does a million other things. ↗

— Marty Rubin

#busyness #deprivation #love #love

I looked on YouTube for sleep deprivation and there were videos of people experimenting with staying awake for a while. You saw all the different stages. ↗

— Rooney Mara

#deprivation #different #experimenting #i #looked

If we were really tough on crime, we'd try to save our children from the desperation and deprivation that leave them primed for a life of crime. ↗

— Carrie P. Meek

#crime #deprivation #desperation #leave #life

Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history. ↗

— Octavio Paz

#also #contrary #deprivation #expression #feeling

There is only one real deprivation... and that is not to be able to give one's gifts to those one loves most. ↗

— May Sarton

#deprivation #gifts #give #loves #most

The moderns, carrying little baggage of the kind that Shelly called "merely cultural," not even living in the traditional air, but breathing into their space helmets a scientific mixture of synthetic gases (and polluted at that) are the true pioneers. Their circuitry seems to include no atavistic domestic sentiment, they have suffered empathectomy, their computers hum no ghostly feedback of Home, Sweet Home. How marvelously free they are! How unutterably deprived! ↗

— Wallace Stegner

#empathy #modern-society #progress #shallowness #technology