#year

The fairest things have fleetest end, Their scent survives their close: But the rose's scent is bitterness To her who loved the rose. ↗

— Francis Thompson

#loss #yearning #love

A few days ago I heard a performance of the Sibelius fifth symphony. As the closing bars approached, I experienced exactly the large, swelling emotion that the music was written to elicit. What would it have been like, I wondered, to be a Finn in the audience at the first performance of the symphony in Helsinki nearly a century ago, and feel that swell overtake one? The answer: one would have felt proud, proud that one of us could put together such sounds, proud that out of nothing we human beings can make such stuff. Contrast with that one´s feelings of shame that we, our people, have made Guantanamo. Musical creation on the one hand, a machine for inflicting pain and humiliation on the other: the best and the worst that human beings are capable of. ↗

— J.M. Coetzee

#music

It was understood that they shared the same thresholds--the same inexhaustible appetite for wasting time, for discussing lofty ideas, for dissecting trivial things, for driving to nowhere in particular, for listening to music, for talking about books, for obsessing over pop culture, but mostly for laughing, talking, and simply being together. There was nothing one could say that the other would find too cruel or too kind. And on those rare occasions when they did tire of each other, they needed only go a day without talking before they yearned to reconnect. ↗

— Galt Niederhoffer

#books #cruel #discussing #dissecting #driving

Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right. ↗

— Oprah Winfrey

#new-year #chance

And then I feel as if I'm witnessing a miracle, as ever so slowly she raises her face towards the moon. I watch her drink in the sight, sensing the flood of memories she's unleashed and wanting nothing more than to let her know I'm here. But instead I stay where I am and stare up at the moon as well. And for the briefest instant, it almost feels like we're together again. ↗

— Nicholas Sparks

#moonlight #yearning #miracles

After spending three years of my life looking into this, I am more convinced than ever that the U.S. government's responsibility for the drug problems in South Central Los Angeles and other inner cities is greater than I ever wrote in the newspaper. ↗

— Gary Webb

#am #angeles #central #cities #convinced

I have no auditory depth perception. She said, “I love you,” and I couldn’t even tell if she was 300 miles away, or 6 feet below my feet and 300 years away.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#auditory #cemetery #death #depth-perception #grave

Amazing sex stays with you. It soaks into your skin. It floats through your dreams and has you silently smoldering with delicious remembrances for hours after. It has you craving it days later. And it has you aching for it if you don’t get it for awhile. ↗

— Roberto Hogue

#erotic #erotica-romance #making-love #sensuality #sex

The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all. ↗

— Anonymous

#year-of-living-biblically #intelligence

A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it. ↗

— Lionel Shriver

#materialism #want #yearning #jealousy