"A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once more intense and less articulate than those of the gregarious man. They are sluggish, yet more wayward, and never without a melancholy tinge. Sights and impressions which others brush aside with a glance, a light comment, a smile, occupy him more ( Read more... )

"Love wounds. There is no love that does no pierce the hands and feet. Love's exquisite happiness is also love's exquisite pain. I do not seek pain but there is pain. I do not seek suffering but there is suffering. It is better not to flinch, not to try and avoid those things in love's direction. It is not easy, this love, but only the impossible ( Read more... )

Haven't done one of these in a while ( Read more... )

"It is hard work to be excellent, since in each case it is hard work to find what is intermediate; e.g. not everyone, but only one who knows, finds the midpoint in a circle. So also getting angry, or giving and spending money, is easy and everyone can do it; but doing it to the right person, in the right amount, at the right time, for the right end ( Read more... )

"Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths
Enwrought with the golden and silver light
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light
I would spread the cloths under your feet
But I, being poor, have only my dreams
I have spread my dreams under your feet
Tread softly because you tread upon my dreams."

- Yeats.

"Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong."

- Peter T. McIntyre.

"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain... When you are joyous look deep into your heart and you will find that it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy."

- Kahil Gibran.

"And they say that after people make love there's a kind of melancholia that descends; la petite mort, you know, the little death. Well, I'm here to tell you, after a romantic night in with yourself, there's a very acute sensation of failed suicide."

- Dylan Moran.

"Poignancy (and this is why it's domain is in the minor key) is the exquisite meshing of two contradictory feelings. It's a piercing beauty, or a sweet sorrow. Anyone who's ever treasured their pain, tried to prolong it, toyed with exacerbating it or been driven to dwell on inside it long after recovery was an option, preferring the company of ( Read more... )

If I could finish it, I'd hide behind all this artifice and stab him hundreds of times, which is what I've been doing here, but I'd replace this blue pen with a knife, this page with jucier flesh.

- Dennis Cooper; Epilogue.