September 2011
“I should like to change into a sunflower most of all. They’re so tall and simple.”
—Maude, Harold and Maude (1971)
“People say, “I’m going to sleep now,” as if it were nothing. But it’s really a bizarre activity. “For the next several hours, while the sun is gone, I’m going to become unconscious, temporarily losing command over everything I know and understand. When the sun returns, I will resume my life.” If you didn’t know what sleep was, and you had only seen it in a science fiction movie, you would think it was weird and tell all your friends about the movie you’d seen. “They had these people, you know? And they would walk around all day and be okay? And then, once a day, usually after dark, they would lie down on these special platforms and become unconscious. They would stop functioning almost completely, except deep in their minds they would have adventures and experiences that were completely impossible in real life. As they lay there, completely vulnerable to their enemies, their only movements were to occasionally shift from one position to another; or, if one of the ‘mind adventures’ got too real, they would sit up and scream and be glad they weren’t unconscious anymore. Then they would drink a lot of coffee.” So, next time you see someone sleeping, make believe you’re in a science fiction movie. And whisper, “The creature is regenerating itself.”
—George Carlin (via atomos)
“I love that moment. When you’re on a long car ride, or listening to music, or reading. And you completely zone out. You forget your troubles, and everyone around you. You’re focused on that one thing, and that one thing only. You’re content, and everything seems peaceful.”
—Unknown (via valiuum)
“It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.”
—L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)
“Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.” —Ted Kooser, “Flying at Night” (via bookoasis)
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.” —Ted Kooser, “Flying at Night” (via bookoasis)
“Body cells replace themselves every month. Even at this very moment. Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.”
—Haruki Murakami (via thechocolatebrigade)
“I’m not sentimental—I’m as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last—the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won’t.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald; This Side of Paradise (via 52hearts)
“I love her for what she has dared to be, for her hardness, her cruelty, her egoism, her perverseness, her demoniac destructiveness. She would crush me to ashes without hesitation. She is a personality created to the limit. I worship her courage to hurt, and I am willing to be sacrificed to it. She will add the sum of me to her.”
—Anaïs Nin (via modellesbians)
Fact:
Scrubbing the floor might be more effective than mopping, but sometimes the only way to tell if your feet are dirty is to stand up and use the mop.
