#lines

Life is very tough and fragile at the same time, it never backs down or surrenders, but will break open to reveal its beauty and ugliness. As a evening primrose that blooms in the flooding moonlight, just before being trampled upon underfoot by the four-legged frost of the night. ↗

— Anthony Liccione

#change #flooding #flower #fragile #frost

When we learn to speak, we learn to translate. ↗

— Octavio Paz

#individuality #loneliness #selfhood #solitude #communication

I talked to a calzone for fifteen minutes last night before I realized it was just an introverted pizza. I wish all my acquaintances were so tasty.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#alone #calzone #communicate #communication #desperation

It was not right, thought Han Fei-tzu, for his wife to die before him: her ancestor-of-the-heart had outlived her husband. Besides, wives should live longer than husbands. Women were more complete inside themselves. They were also better at living in their children. They were never as solitary as a man alone. ↗

— Orson Scott Card

#loneliness #death

I have outlasted all desire, My dreams and I have grown apart; My grief alone is left entire, The gleamings of an empty heart. The storms of ruthless dispensation Have struck my flowery garland numb, I live in lonely desolation And wonder when my end will come. Thus on a naked tree-limb, blasted By tardy winter's whistling chill, A single leaf which has outlasted Its season will be trembling still. ↗

— Alexander Pushkin

#desire #dreams #grief #heart #lonliness

Careers in virtually all academic disciplines are fostered by being a superstar who knows more about one subject than anyone else in the world. ↗

— Philip Zimbardo

#academic #anyone #being #careers #disciplines

I'm trying to go over my lines. I woke up on the floor, somebody had me in their arms. I didn't quite know who, people looked so unfamiliar. That's about all I remember. ↗

— Dick York

#arms #floor #go #had #i

[The modern age] knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. In our quietest and loneliest hour the automatic ice-maker in the refrigerator will cluck and drop an ice cube, the automatic dishwasher will sigh through its changes, a plane will drone over, the nearest freeway will vibrate the air. Red and white lights will pass in the sky, lights will shine along highways and glance off windows. There is always a radio that can be turned to some all-night station, or a television set to turn artificial moonlight into the flickering images of the late show. We can put on a turntable whatever consolation we most respond to, Mozart or Copland or the Grateful Dead. ↗

— Wallace Stegner

#isolation #loneliness #modern-society #noise #peace

In the country, I stopped being a person who, in the words of Sylvia Boorstein, startles easily. I grew calmer, but beneath that calm was a deep well of loneliness I hadn't known was there. ... Anxiety was my fuel. When I stopped, it was all waiting for me: fear, anger, grief, despair, and that terrible, terrible loneliness. What was it about? I was hardly alone. I loved my husband and son. I had great friends, colleagues, students. In the quiet, in the extra hours, I was forced to ask the question, and to listen carefully to the answer: I was lonely for myself. [p. 123] ↗

— Dani Shapiro

#anger

Silence is the source of healing. When we bring things from within ourselves out into the light of awareness, a healing process happens. In the silence, we can let go of all anger, sadness, fear, loneliness and frustration. ↗

— Swami Dhyan Giten

#fear #frustration #healing #loneliness #sadness