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(via breathingbooks)

Now, the world is more than it seems to be. You know this, because you read stories. You understand that there is the surface and then there are things that glimmer and shift underneath it. And you know that not everyone believes in those things, that there are people - a great many people - who believe the world cannot be any more than what they can see with their eyes.

But we know better.

Anne Ursu, Breadcrumbs

2 weeks ago

There are things you do not notice until they are gone. Like the certainty that your body is a single whole, that there’s something keeping you from breaking into pieces and scattering with the winds.

Anne Ursu, Breadcrumbs

2 weeks ago

I want to be with you, forever and beyond, but you write that you are too young to marry or too old or too short or too hungry - until I crumple your letters up in despair, only to smooth them out again for a twelfth reading, hunting for hidden meanings

Gail Carson Levine, Ella Enchanted

2 weeks ago

But without such ignorance, such carelessness, how could we live? If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next - if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions - you’d be doomed. You’d be as ruined as God. You’d be a stone. You’d never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You’d never love anyone, ever again. You’d never dare to.

Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

1 month ago

Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we’re still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on fire hydrants. We put on display our framed photographs, our parchment diplomas, our silver-plated cups; we monogram our linen, we carve our names on trees, we scrawl them on washroom walls. It’s all the same impulse. What do we hope from it? Applause, envy, respect? Or simply attention, of any kind we can get?

At the very least we want a witness. We can’t stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio turning down.

Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

2 months ago

I felt, that night, on that stage, under that skull, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone. I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it? What’s so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What’s so great about feeling and dreaming?

Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

4 months ago

Oddly, on occassion, I sense a peacefulness within. You would think that after all I have seen - after all I have suffered - my soul would be a twisted jumble of stress, confusion, and melancholy. Often, it’s just that.

But then, there is the peace.

I feel it sometimes, as I do now, staring out over the frozen cliffs and glass mountains in the still of morning, watching a sunrise that is so majestic that I know that none shall ever be its match.

Brandon Sanderson, The Final Empire

4 months ago

Bran Stark:	Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?
Eddard Stark:	That is the only time a man can be brave.
	- A Game of Thrones

This cat hasn’t given up trying to get in to my kitchen

This cat hasn’t given up trying to get in to my kitchen