#iv

I can't face losin' ya, Riley. Yer all I got left in this world.” That brutal honesty again. He'd peeled away more armor, and this time he'd exposed his heart. ↗

— Jana Oliver

#denver-beck #jana-oliver #riley-blackthorne #honesty

A lonely day is God's way of saying that he wants to spend some quality time with you. ↗

— Criss Jami

#divine #divine-intervention #emotions #energizer #god

One of the greatest evils is the foolishness of a good man. For the giving man to withhold helping someone in order to first assure personal fortification is not selfish, but to elude needless self-destruction; martyrdom is only practical when the thought is to die, else a good man faces the consequence of digging a hole from which he cannot escape, and truly helps no one in the long run. ↗

— Mike Norton

#die #dig #digging #escape #evil

A stone has been cast into the reliable immutable pond of the past, and as the ripples subside everything appears different. The reflections are quite other; everything has swung and shattered, it is all beyond recovery ↗

— Penelope Lively

#the-photograph #recovery

It all made sense — terrible sense. The panic she had experienced in the warehouse district because of not knowing what had happened had been superseded at the newsstand by the even greater panic of partial knowledge. And now the torment of partly knowing had yielded to the infinitely greater terror of knowing precisely ↗

— Flora Rheta Schreiber

#dissociation #dissociative #dissociative-amnesia #dissociative-identity-disorder #fugue

Theirs was the eternal youth of an alternating self, a youth with the constant although unfulfilled promise of growing up ↗

— Flora Rheta Schreiber

#amnesia #dissociation #dissociative-amnesia #dissociative-identity-disorder #fugue

To be an artist was to have failure as your constant bedfellow. ↗

— M. Thomas Gammarino

#creativity #failure #japan

I told her stories. They were only a sentence long, each one of them. That’s all I knew how to find. So I told her broken stories. The little pieces of broken stories I could find. I told her what I could. I told her that the Global Alliance had issued more warnings about the possibility of total war if their demands were not met. I told her that the Emperor Nero, from Rome, had a giant sea built where he could keep sea monsters and have naval battles staged for him. I told her that there had been rioting in malls all over America, and that no one knew why. I told her that the red-suited Santa Claus we know — the regular one? — was popularized by the Coca-Cola Company in the 1930s. I told her that the White House had not confirmed or denied reports that extensive bombing had started in major cities in South America. I told her, “There’s an ancient saying in Japan, that life is like walking from one side of infinite darkness to another, on a bridge of dreams. They say that we’re all crossing the bridge of dreams together. That there’s nothing more than that. Just us, on the bridge of dreams. ↗

— M.T. Anderson

#decline-of-civilization #excess #dreams

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a communist; Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a socialist; Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist; Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Jew; Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak out for me. ↗

— Martin Niemöller

#compassion #cowardice #diversity #human-rights #diversity

Most civilisation is based on cowardice. It's so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame. ↗

— Frank Herbert

#civilisation #cowardice #law #cowardice