godblessyoumrtrout

[godblessyoumrtrout]

If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the earth can teach us as when everything seems dead and later proves to be alive.

Pablo Neruda, "A Callarse" or "Keeping Quiet" tr. Alastair Reid

#pablo neruda #poetry #literature #dark academia #poems #writers and poets

[godblessyoumrtrout]

(via fuckyeahkurtvonnegut-blog)

[godblessyoumrtrout]

/ Marvin Cone, Habitation, 1938 -39

[godblessyoumrtrout]

Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began. Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? 

-Herman Melville, Moby Dick

#literature #book quotes #herman melville #moby dick

[godblessyoumrtrout]

'I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.' He nodded, 'Big, undreamed-of things — the people on the edge see them first.'

-Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

#literature #vonnegut #kurt vonnegut #player piano #book quotes #books

[godblessyoumrtrout]

(via fuckyeahkurtvonnegut-blog)

[godblessyoumrtrout]

How right it is to love flowers and the greenery of pines and ivy and hawthorn hedges; they have been with us from the very beginning.

Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh (via metamorphesque)

[godblessyoumrtrout]

There is a feeling part of us that does not grow old at all. If we could peel off the callus, and wanted to, there we would be, untouched by time, unwithered, vulnerable, afflicted and volatile and blind to consequence...

Wallace Stegner, The Spectator Bird

#Wallace Stegner #literature #read this book #book quotes #aging #dark academia

[godblessyoumrtrout]

I was reminded of a remark of Willa Cather's, that you can't paint sunlight, you can only paint what it does with shadows on a wall. If you examine a life, as Socrates has been so tediously advising us to do for so many centuries, do you really examine the life, or do you examine the shadows it casts on other lives? Entity or relationships? Objective reality or the vanishing point of a multiple perspective exercise? Prism or the rainbows it refracts? And what if you're the wall? What if you never cast a shadow or rainbow of your own but have only caught those cast by others?

Wallace Stegner, The Spectator Bird

#wallace stegner #spectator bird #literature #book quotes #literary

[godblessyoumrtrout]

[godblessyoumrtrout]

- Kurt Vonnegut, "The world according to Kurt". Interview with Simon Houpt, Globe and Mail (Toronto), October 11, 2005.

#kurt vonnegut #home #literature #quotes #book quotes

[godblessyoumrtrout]

It was a fine April morning when I came out of the library; the sun was shining and the false glorious promises of spring were everywhere, showing oddly through the village grime

Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

#shirley jackson #spring #we have always lived in the castle #april #literature #books #book quotes

[godblessyoumrtrout]

“You are good in countless ways, and you are not evil when you are not good”

- The Prophet, Khalil Gibran 

#kahlil gibran #the prophet #poetry #philosophy #literature #book quotes

[godblessyoumrtrout]

e.e. cummings, from “in time of daffodils(who know” (in 95 Poems), Complete Poems: 1904-1962

[Text ID: “In time of daffodils(who know the goal of living is to grow)”]

[godblessyoumrtrout]

Childhood is dark and it's always moaning like a little animal that's locked in a cellar and forgotten. It comes out of your throat like your breath in the cold, and sometimes it's too little, other times too big. It never fits exactly. It's only when it has been cast off that you can look at it calmly and talk about it like an illness you've survived.

Tove Ditlevsen, Childhood/ Youth/ Dependency (The Copenhagen Trilogy)

#tove ditlevsen #copenhagentrilogy #literature #book quotes #bookish #poetry #books

[godblessyoumrtrout]

You can't get out of childhood, and it clings to you like a bad smell. You notice it in other children— each childhood has its own smell. You don't recognize your own and sometimes you're afraid that it's worse than others'. You're standing talking to another girl whose childhood smells of coal and ashes, and suddenly she takes a step back because she has noticed the terrible stink of your childhood. On the sly, you observe the adults whose childhood lies inside them, torn and full of holes like a used and moth-eaten rug no one thinks about anymore or has any use for. You can't tell by looking at them that they've had a childhood, and you don't dare ask how they managed to make it through without their faces getting deeply scarred and marked by it.

Tove Ditlevsen, Childhood / Youth / Dependency (The Copenhagen Trilogy)

#tove ditlevsen #childhood #literature #books #book quotes #copenhagentrilogy #poetry

[godblessyoumrtrout]

It’s beautiful, Steve.