341I think people are often quite unaware of their inner selves, their other selves, their imaginative selves, the selves that aren’t on show in the world. It’s something you grow out of from childhood onwards, losing possession of yourself, really. I think literature is one of the best ways back into that. You are hypnotized as soon as you get into a book that particularly works for you, whether it’s fiction or a poem. You find that your defenses drop, and as soon as that happens, an imaginative reality can take over because you are no longer censoring your own perceptions, your own awareness of the world.
Jeanette Winterson, Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 150
(via leopoldgursky)
(via thatkief)
Since the dawn of recorded history, something like 110 billion human beings have been born into this world. And not a single one of them made it. There are 6.8 billion people on the planet. Roughly 60 million of them die every year. 60 million people. That comes out to about 160,000 per day. I read this quote once when I was a kid, “We live alone, we die alone. Everything else is just an illusion. ” It used to keep me up at night. We all die alone. So, why am I supposed to spend my life working, sweating, struggling?…For an illusion? Because no amount of friends, no girl, no assignments about conjugating the pluperfect or determining the square root of the hypotenuse is gonna help me avoid my fate. I have better things to do with my time.
Freddie Highmore as George Zinavoy in The Art of Getting By (via glittercookiesatmidnight)
(Source: invincibleteenager, via thatkief)
(Source: olderoticart, via metalonmetalblog)
An anonymous author’s novel written on the walls of an abandoned house in Chongqing, China
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If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.
Thomas Merton (via moldavia)
(Source: misswallflower, via thatkief)
I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth. This was what I had done. I had built up false pictures in my mind and sat before them. I had never had the courage to demand the truth.
Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca (via selfinspiration)
(Source: larmoyante, via thatkief)
You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (via alecshao)
(Source: honeyforthehomeless, via alecshao)
Live your daily life in a way that you never lose yourself. When you are carried away with your worries, fears, cravings, anger, and desire, you run away from yourself and you lose yourself. The practice is always to go back to oneself.
Thich Nhat Hanh
(via thefreenomad)
Don’t cling to anything and don’t reject anything. Let come what comes, and accomodate yourself to that, whatever it is. If good mental images arise, that is fine. If bad mental images arise, that is fine, too. Look on all of it as equal, and make yourself comfortable with whatever happens. Don’t fight with what you experience, just observe it all mindfully.
Bhante Henepola Gunaratana (via pygmypinky)
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