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Things are needy. They take up space. They want attention, and they will drive you mad if you let them.
Viewing a loved one’s carefully restored remains could reduce the trauma that witnessing a tragic accident often caused. It would ease their painful memories and help those left behind accept the reality of the physical death.
Grief, she said, was personal and expressed itself in many ways.
Stories never start at the beginning, Benny. They differ from life in that regard. Life is lived from birth to death, from the beginning into an unknowable future. But stories are told in hindsight. Stories are life lived backward.
IF SKIN MARKS THE BORDER where an I ends and a you begins, then that night they did all they could to cross it.
How on earth, on this vast planet of eight billion humans, do two small human beings who are destined for each other manage to meet?
For, surely, people do meet, and they fall in love, but those meetings are random, mere happenstance, and destiny is just the story they tell themselves afterward. But what a sweet story it is! And in the end, to us, that’s what really matters.
That’s what books are for, after all, to tell your stories, to hold them and keep them safe between our covers for as long as we’re able.
Dreams are like doors. They’re like portals to another reality, and once they’re open, you better watch out.
Inside? Outside? What is the difference and how can you tell? When a sound enters your body through your ears and merges with your mind, what happens to it? Is it still a sound then, or has it become something else? When you eat a wing or an egg or a drumstick, at what point is it no longer a chicken? When you read these words on a page, what happens to them, when they become you?
The world is a beautiful book for those who read it.
Human language is a clumsy tool. People have such a hard time understanding each other, so how can you even begin to imagine the subjectivities of animals and insects and plants, never mind pebbles and sand? Bound as you are by your senses—so blunt and yet so beautiful—it’s impossible for you to imagine that the myriad beings you dismiss as insentient might have inner lives, too.
the point of books was to teach you what you didn’t already know.
The first words of a book are of utmost importance. The moment of encounter, when a reader turns to that first page and reads those opening words, it’s like locking eyes or touching someone’s hand for the first time, and we feel it, too. Books don’t have eyes or hands, it’s true, but when a book and a reader are meant for each other, both of them know it,
If you are reading this, then chances are you are dissatisfied with your life. You would like to make a change, but you feel so overwhelmed, you don’t even know where to begin.
being a target for your kid’s anger was just part of being a mother.
WHAT MAKES A PERSON want so much? What gives things the power to enchant, and is there any limit to the desire for more?
Say good morning to the toilet. Thank it for taking all your shit.
Hug yourself and say I love you. Repeat until it’s true.
Smile at someone you don’t like. If they smile back, give yourself a point.
a mother never stops carrying her child,
Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Imagine your body is heavy and filled with sand, and as you exhale, feel the sand slowly draining out of you. Breathe and exhale until the sand is all gone.
“Many people are afraid of heights. Many people are tired of living, too.”
I hef become somewhat intrigued by this notion of a slot. That a slot is a thing, we cannot deny, however it is a thing defined entirely by lack, by an absence of form, by negative space, by its own emptiness. We know vat it isn’t, but how can we truly know vat it is? How can we tell ze difference between a slot and, say, a slit? Is a slit slimmer than a slot, and therefore lacking less? If it lacks less, does it vant more?
WHAT MAKES A PERSON want so much? What gives things the power to enchant, and is there a limit to the desire for more?
Are words the conduit through which your desire travels, or are they just an afterthought, an add-on, a trick of your human mind to justify the prelinguistic itch that prefigures it?
wants are almost insatiable; that one want satisfied makes way for another. The conclusion is that economically we have a boundless field before us; that there are new wants which will make way endlessly for newer wants, as fast as they are satisfied.
history is just this one, giant, ongoing catastrophe that keeps piling up junk
“I thought progress was a good thing.” “Well, maybe not if it just keeps piling up more junk and keeps you from fixing stuff from the past.”
we all need to study history so we’re not doomed to repeat it,
Children have a limited ability to understand a parent’s inner life, perceiving it through the lens of their own subjectivity and understanding only as much as impacts them. Children are remarkably obtuse that way,
We are our planet, and we must love it completely. We must love our garbage, our pollution, our trash. We must love our trans-earth, our trans-planet, in all its mutable distress.
rich people profit from climate disaster. It’s good for business. In a neoliberal capitalist economy, there’s no incentive for corporations to clean up their act, which means, as a planet, we’re fucked.”
the artist’s job is to disrupt the status quo and change the way people normally see things.
People are born from the womb of the world with different sensitivities, and the world needs every single one of you to experience it fully, so that it might be fully experienced. If even one person were left out, the world would be diminished.
said you don’t have to worry about being creative. The world is creative, endlessly so, and its generative nature is part of who you are. The world has given you the eyes to see the beauty of its mountains and rivers, and the ears to hear the music of its wind and sea, and the voice you need to tell it.
poetry was like that, too, like breezes or winds in the mind. At first you might not feel much, not whole words or sentences, but more like currents of air moving across an open wound. You have to keep your mind open and try to feel the voice of the poem as it blows by, even if it hurts a little.
What is a story before it becomes words? Bare experience,
Story is its own bare experience. Fish swim in water, unaware that it is water. Birds fly in air, unaware that it is air. Story is the air that you people breathe, the ocean you swim in, and we books are the rocks along the shoreline that channel your currents and contain your tides. Books will always have the last word, even if nobody is around to read them.
Most people don’t even notice when their book comes calling. They’re too busy checking their cell phones.
“Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.”
“Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.”
what’s important is not finishing a task but rather just doing it, completely.
Cleaning is a practice of compassion. Weeding is a practice of faith. Tidying is love!
It’s normal for one’s past and future to feel far away,
It’s the fucking world we live in. It’s capitalism that’s crazy. It’s neoliberalism, and materialism, and our fucked-up consumer culture that’s crazy. It’s the fucking meritocracy that tells you that feeling sad is wrong and it’s your fault if you’re broken, but hey, capitalism can fix you! Just take these miracle pills and go shopping and buy yourself some new shit! It’s the doctors and shrinks and corporate medicine and Big Pharma, making billions of dollars telling us we’re crazy and then peddling us their so-called cures. That’s fucking crazy. . . .”
“You are who you are, Benny Oh. Just don’t let anyone tell you that’s a problem.”
The more you thought about what you’d done, the more agitated you became.
Great is the Matter of Birth and Death. Life is transient. Time will not wait. Wake up! Wake up! Do not waste a moment!
Grief took many forms and went through many stages.
