#ties

We talk of strong personalities, and they are strong, until the not-every-day when we see them as we might see one woman alone in a desert, and know that all the strength we thought we knew was only courage, only her lone song echoing among the stones; and then at last when we have understood this and made up our minds to hear the song and admire its courage and its sweetness, we wait for the next note and it does not come. The last word, with its pure tone, echoes and fades and is gone, and we realize—only then—that we do not know what it was, that we have been too intent on the melody to hear even one word. We go then to find the singer, thinking she will be standing where we last saw her. There are only bones and sand and a few faded rags. ↗

— Gene Wolfe

#courage

I fully recognize and appreciate the many substantial contributions of black Americans and other minorities to the creation and preservation and development of our great nation. ↗

— Strom Thurmond

#black #black americans #contributions #creation #development

Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness, and small obligations given habitually, are what preserve the heart and secure comfort. ↗

— Humphry Davy

#duties #given #great #habitually #heart

Junction nineteen! Una, she came off at Junction nineteen! You've added an hour to your journey before you even started. Come on, let's get you a drink. How's your love life, anyway?" Oh GOD. Why can't married people understand that this is no longer a polite question to ask? We wouldn't rush up to THEM and roar, "How's your marriage going? Still having sex?" Everyone knows that dating in your thirties is not the happy-go-lucky free-for-it-all it was when you were twenty-two and that the honest answer is more likely to be, "Actually, last night my married lover appeared wearing suspenders and a darling little Angora crop-top, told me he was gay/a sex addict/a narcotic addict/a commitment phobic and beat me up with a dildo," than, "Super, thanks. ↗

— Helen Fielding

#humor #dating

We would meet outside the same wine bar we had gone to on our first date, and from there we would wander through the city for five or six hours since neither one of us had a private place that we could retreat to. Walking out in the open for so long only helped to draw us closer. There was too much space on the avenues, and the side streets were often too crowded with people and cabs hurrying to cut across town. To counter that we held each other's hands and arms, ribs and waists. ↗

— Dinaw Mengestu

#dating

I recently turned down a film that I didn't want my kids to see. Priorities shift. Sometimes I'm sad about that, but not enough to do anything about it. ↗

— Dianne Wiest

#anything #down #enough #film #i

Cats know how to obtain food without labor, shelter without confinement, and love without penalties. ↗

— W. L. George

#cats #confinement #food #how #know

We live in the Facebook era. I think everyone, not just celebrities, have an unprecedented level of self-awareness, of presenting yourself to the world. The truth is, it starts with how you look, and that goes into how you dress. ↗

— Allison Williams

#dress #era #everyone #facebook #goes

Whenever I happen to be in a city of any size, I marvel that riots do not break out everyday: Massacres, unspeakable carnage, a doomsday chaos. How can so many human beings coexist in a space so confined without hating each other to death? ↗

— Emil Cioran

#cities #hate #riots #death

I think about the Old Ones, that they have a past but no history. I think about the inevitability of death, and whether it’s not that very inevitability that inspires us to take photographs and make scrapbooks and tell stories. That that’s how we humans find our way to immortality. This is not a new thought; I’ve had such thoughts before. But I have a new thought now. That that’s how we find our way toward meaning. Meaning. If you’re going to die, you want to find meaning in life. You want to connect the dots. ↗

— Franny Billingsley

#history #inevitabilities #inspiration #meaning #death