Emma Wynne > Emma Wynne's Quotes

“It’s a horrible idea that there is somebody who owns us, who makes us, who supervises us – waking and sleeping – who knows our thoughts, who can convict us of thought crime – thought crime! Just for what we think! – who can judge us while we sleep for things that might occur to us in our dreams; who can create us sick – as apparently we are – and then order us on pain of eternal torture to be well again. To demand this, to wish this to be true, is to wish to live as an abject slave!”
― Christopher Hitchens

“For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?

But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?

How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void. But as you might expect, an occasional thought will slip into this void. People’s minds can’t be a complete blank. Human beings’ emotions are not strong or consistent enough to sustain a vacuum. What I mean is, the kinds of thoughts and ideas that invade my emotions as I run remain subordinate to that void. Lacking content, they are just random thoughts that gather around that central void. The thoughts that occur to me while I’m running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky as always. The clouds are mere guests in the sky that pass away and vanish, leaving behind the sky.”
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running