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“To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is a pleasure beyond compare." — Yoshida Kenkō, medieval Buddhist monk (1283-1350)

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jenny holzer

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“You meet saints everywhere. They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society.”

- Kurt Vonnegut

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https://twitter.com/1000lifehacks

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“The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will… but it is easier to define this ideal than to give practical instructions for bringing it about.”

— William James, The Principles of Psychology

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Hello Neil, I know you get quite a few asks, and there’s only a slim chance that you’ll see this, but I figured I’d take that chance. My mom is a huge fan of yours and especially the sandman comics, she used to read them as a teen and has a whole collection, and your works mean a lot to her. She’s struggling right now and feels like her life is going nowhere, and as you seem wise, I was hoping you could offer some words of motivation or inspiration for her. Thank you for taking the time to read this (or not if you didn’t)

When it gets really hard for me I re-read Stephen Fry's letter to someone having a rough time. I hope it helps your mother:

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"Occassional collisions unexpectedly encountered determine the direction of a lifetime."

Elias Canetti (from ‘Auto-da-Fe’)

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— Tennessee Williams, Notebooks

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“There’s nothing more embarrassing than being a poet, really.”

Elizabeth Bishop

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Serenity Prayer

Send me a slow news day,

a quiet, subdued day,

in which nothing much happens of note,

save for the passing of time,

the consumption of wine,

and a re-run of Murder, She Wrote.

Grant me a no news day,

a spare-me-your-views day,

in which nothing much happens at all,

except a few hours together

some regional weather,

a day we can barely recall.

Brian Bilston

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“We cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever. We must stand up and move on to the next action.”

— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

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‘And yes the

quiet turn of your page is the day

tilting so, faded in the light.’

J.H.Prynne (from the poem ‘Rich in Vitamin C’)

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"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."

– Mark Twain

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Vincent van Gogh, Ever Yours: The Essential Letters

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Wolfgang Schulze Poet Jacques Prévert and Jacqueline Laurent, Paris 1939

Une orange sur la table Ta robe sur le tapis Et toi dans mon lit Doux présent du présent Fraîcheur de la nuit Chaleur de ma vie.

(An orange on the table Your dress on the rug And you in my bed Sweet present of the present Cool of the night Warmth of my life).

-- Jacques Prévert, "Alicante" 1946

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"The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is."

Nadine Gordimer, novelist, Nobel laureate (20th November 1923-2014)