#ok

We read novels because we need stories; we crave them; we can’t live without telling them and hearing them. Stories are how we make sense of our lives and of the world. When we’re distressed and go to therapy, our therapist’s job is to help us tell our story. Life doesn’t come with plots; it’s messy and chaotic; life is one damn, inexplicable thing after another. And we can’t have that. We insist on meaning. And so we tell stories so that our lives make sense. ↗

— John Dufresne

#fiction #novel #story #storytelling #life

This was a land of lost souls. Human beings who had weathered great storms in life, had suffered unspeakable loss, had been put to painful tests of existence, and still remained standing—but just barely. ↗

— Clare Vanderpool

#life

I was shaking so hard, I could barely get the door unlocked. I just got the door shut behind me when I sank to my knees and fell apart. I cried so hard I was nearly convulsing. I had never felt such raw emotions in my life. I felt like someone had ripped my heart out of my chest and tore it to pieces. I curled into a ball on the floor and tried desperately to disappear. But no matter how small I got, I was still here. I still existed. And for a short while, I thought I had mattered to someone. I guess I was wrong. I mattered to no one. ↗

— Dakota Madison

#heartbroken #sadness #life

And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely. “Everything must have a purpose?” asked God. “Certainly,” said man. “Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God. And He went away. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#creation #life #purpose-of-life #life

There's a fine line between being brave and just not giving a shit anymore. ↗

— Sara Furlong Burr

#indie-author #indie-books #science-fiction-romance #science

What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#literature #reading #words #writing #funny

Hooking on scuba gear and blindly diving into zombie-infested water is a wonderful way to mix the two childhood terrors of being eaten and drowning. ↗

— Max Brooks

#the-zombie-survival-guide #zombies

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#civilization #civilized #emerson #quote #reading

When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values[...]. ↗

— Simone de Beauvoir

#culture #literature #culture

Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever. ↗

— Will Self

#journals #memory #notebook #writing #information