#dl

It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter. ↗

— J.R.R. Tolkien

#gollum #hobbit #riddle #life

The first door in the hall leads to youth, the second door leads to middle age, and the third door leads to the bathroom. But knock first, because I think grandpa’s in there. 
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#bathroom #door #family #grandpa #hall

Delirium: You use that word so much. Responsibilities. Do you ever think about what that means? I mean, what does it mean to you? In your head? Dream: Well, I use it to refer that area of existence over which I exert a certain amount of control or influence. In my case, the realm and action of dreaming. Delirium: Hump. It's more than that. The things we do make echoes. S'pose, f'rinstance, you stop on a street corner and admire a brilliant fork of lightning--ZAP! Well for ages after people and things will stop on that very same corner, stare up at the sky. They wouldn't even know what they were looking for. Some of them might see a ghost bolt of lightning in the street. Some of them might even be killed by it. Our existence deforms the universe. THAT'S responsibility. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#dream #neil-gaiman #responsibility #the-dreaming #the-endless

Middle school is for being like everyone else; middle age is for being like yourself. (430) ↗

— Victoria Moran

#being-yourself #middle-age #age

W polowie drogi mojego zywota posrod ciemnego znalazlem sie lasu. Las ten co gorsza byl zielony. ↗

— Witold Gombrowicz

#green-forest #middle-age-crisis #age

I'm at a camp with over 100 girls 11 to 13 years old, around my own age, and I feel like my parents are my only friends. -Mackenzie ↗

— Tara Michener

#bullying #middle-grade #multicultural #multiculturalism #tara-michener

It’s far too rarely stated that the technology industry is not in the business of making people productive. It is only in the business of selling more technology. ↗

— Mark Hurst

#age

Those darling byegone times, Mr Carker,' said Cleopatra, 'with their delicious fortresses, and their dear old dungeons, and their delightful places of torture, and their romantic vengeances, and their picturesque assaults and sieges, and everything that makes life truly charming! How dreadfully we have degenerated! ↗

— Charles Dickens

#humor #irony #medieval #middle-ages #nostalgia

There were a lot of these middle-aged single types in the neighborhood, shipwrecked by every kind of catastrophe, but she was one of the few who didn't have children, who lived alone, who was still kinda young. Something must have happened, your mother speculated. In her mind, a woman with no child could be explained only by vast untrammelled calamity. Maybe she just doesn't like children. Nobody likes children, your mother assured you. That doesn't mean you don't have them. ↗

— Junot Díaz

#childlessness #children #singles #women #age

I felt suddenly very young - or perhaps I felt my age: an almost childlike twenty-two, rather than that permanent middle-age that attaches itself to the man who lives alone and supports himself by wearing a suit in a city not of his birth. ↗

— Mohsin Hamid

#being-young #corporate-life #feeling-middle-age #age