#iving

And I would have answered: "The knottier the branch, the more twisted and misshapen, the more bent people called it, the harder it is to find it a place among the smooth planks, the more people agree that it should be thrown on the fire, the more useless it is, the more unsuitable for anything except letting one's imagination run riot, the more I covet it, the more I yearn to weigh it in my hand, the more I long to let my whittling knife be guided by its knots and veins...Yes, bring that piece to me... ↗

— Sjón

#strange #wise #imagination

The harassed look is that of a desperately tired swimmer or runner; yet there is no question of stopping. The creature we are watching will struggle on and on until it drops. Not because it is heroic. It can imagine no alternative. Staring and staring into the mirror, it sees many faces within its face - the face of the child, the boy, the young man, the not-so-young-man - all present still, preserved as fossils, dead. Their message to this live dying creature is: Look at us - we have died -what is there to be afraid of? It answers them: But it happened so gradually, so easily. I am afraid of being rushed. ↗

— Christopher Isherwood

#living #imagination

Our life is a blank book and we are the authors......... Write and shape your story as much as the mind can imagine it ↗

— Jason Calder

#imagination

Prudence's flat was in the kind of block where Jane imagined people might be found dead, though she had never said this to Prudence herself; it seemed rather a macabre fancy and not one to be confided to an unmarried woman living alone. ↗

— Barbara Pym

#imagination

No one is indispensable to anyone else. You imagine you're necessary to him or that he will be very unhappy if you leave him, but I'm sure that if you do, within three months he will have fitted another face into your role and you'll see that no one is suffering because of your absence. You must feel free to do whatever feels best to you. Being someone's nurse is no way to live unless you're unable to do anything else. You have to say something on your own and you ought to be thinking, first and foremost, about that. ↗

— Françoise Gilot

#living-for-oneself #imagination

Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape. ↗

— Bell Hooks

#giving-others-space #love #manners #self-care #self-confidence

Again, I am surprised why people seek to eliminate lust and cling to love; as they wish to ignore happiness and cleave unto joy! Now, now, let's not sugar-coat things! Lust has a lot more to do with life and what is the good of life if you do not carry much lust inside of you at all times? And joy is a noble thing, but happiness though fleeting can be found every day and in every small little way! ↗

— C. JoyBell C.

#inspirational #inspirational-life #living-life-to-the-fullest #lust #lust-for-everything

I'd think it strange that the boardinghouse attracted both him and me, but that's what cheap places do -- draw in people with no money. An apartment of my own was unthinkable at that time of my life, and even if I'd found an affordable one it wouldn't have satisfied my fundamental need to live in a communal past, or what I imagined the past to be like: a world full of antiques. ↗

— David Sedaris

#community #living #money #imagination

You see? You're just figuring it out now, but I discovered a long time ago that the smarter you are, the more tempting it is to just let people imagine you. We move through each other's lives like ghosts, leaving behind haunting memories of people who never existed. ↗

— Robyn Schneider

#life-lessons #pain #imagination

What you are is God's gift to you, what you become is your gift to God. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#christian-living #christianity #gift #god #inspirational