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We dreamed, I think, of a sound, of a song, that would say what we could not and that would at the same time excuse us from ever having to say anything.

— Brian Dillon, In the Dark Room: A Journey in Memory

#quote #Brian Dillon #In the Dark Room: A Journey in Memory #In the Dark Room #In the Dark Room A Journey in Memory #lit #quotes #non fiction

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And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.

John Steinbeck, East of Eden

#quote #John Steinbeck #East of Eden #lit #quotes #things to live by

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I made my way as if in a state of delirium, no doubt seeking the same thing that I obtained there in my youth—the wisdom to be able to bear my suffering.

Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob

#quote #Olga Tokarczuk #Jennifer Croft #The Books of Jacob #lit #quotes

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do you have any recommendations about kindness? i love your posts!

Thank you so much (and sorry for the late response)! I think of kindness both towards others and toward ourselves, each of which is intertwined with love. Excerpts from essays, poems, and songs are below. As for books, I really love Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These — a short but powerful novella on kindness and courage.

Children in the Garden: On Life at a 3,100-Mile Race, a beautiful essay by Devin Kelly

One beauty of endurance running is that it forces everyone involved — the runners, those helping them — to create a world within a world. “It’s crazy,” Arpan told me one day at the race, “but when you’re running the race, it becomes your home.” If you are running in this world within a world, the claustrophobic confines of the world-at-large — which is, paradoxically, bigger but less open — fall away, and you worry about the needs that are most present to you in that moment: food, breath, energy, each stubborn footfall. If you are helping, your world becomes simply the person or people you are helping. You focus the energy of your compassion on a few single beings, and you ask them questions you might never ask someone else in the world outside. What do you need? Are you hungry? Do you want to walk? Do you need to sit down? Perhaps you realize — as I have, writing this — that these questions could be asked of anyone in the world. Anyone right now. Maybe there is someone next to you while you are reading this. What do they need? Have you asked them? I haven’t asked anyone such a question today. I should have, I know. I should right now.

from "Small Kindnesses" by Danusha Laméris

We have so little of each other, now. So far from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange. What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these fleeting temples we make together when we say, "Here, have my seat," "Go ahead—you first," "I like your hat."

from "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

"Vienna" by Billy Joel

Slow down, you crazy child And take the phone off the hook and disappear for awhile It's alright, you can afford to lose a day or two, ooh When will you realize Vienna waits for you?

From a postcard, c.1910

“I shall pass through this world but once, any good thing therefore I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now, let me not defer it, or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.” 

from "5.00 Mass" by Franz Wright

We love one another. We don't really know anyone well, but we love one another.

#answered #recommendations #mine

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That people could come into the world in a place they could not at first even name and had never known before; and that out of a nameless and unknown place they could grow and move around in it until its name they knew and called with love, and call it HOME, and put roots there and love others there; so that whenever they left this place they would sing homesick songs about it and write poems of yearning for it, like a lover: remembering the grouping of old trees, the fall of slopes and hills, the lay of fields and the running of rivers; of animals there, and of objects lived with; of faces, and names, all of love and belonging, and forever be returning to it or leaving it again!

William Goyen, The House of Breath

#quote #William Goyen #The House of Breath #lit #quotes

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Deity is in the details & we are details among other details & we long to be  Teased out of ourselves. And become all of them.

Larry Levis, “Elegy with a Bridle in Its Hand” in Elegy

#quote #Larry Levis #Elegy with a Bridle in Its Hand #Elegy #lit #quotes #poetry

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All I know is that there was a change in me and, discovering that change in me, I would do anything to keep it unchanged I would not let it die in me. I had to keep listening, listening, listening to it, just as you listen to another thing in this shutter. The sawmill tried to drown it out, the cisternwheel tried to drown it out; I had to save it, hear it; so I went away. I don’t want to live if I can’t hear that voice.

William Goyen, The House of Breath

#quote #William Goyen #The House of Breath #lit #quotes

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Love has a range.

We are built to love, and we can summon that love to do nearly impossible things — and yet that love has an outer range of maybe 30 yards. It’s like a wonderful lamp. It fills the inside of our houses. It washes over our families and our pets. It extends, as we walk, to the town around us.

But it cannot leap, with any of the necessary intensity, across city limits or state lines or oceans. It cannot leap, except abstractly, with great effort, to distant people in need, or to strange, threatened animals. We love, really love, what is near us. What we have touched. What loves us back.

Sam Anderson, “The Last Two Northern White Rhinos On Earth” in The New York Times

#quote #Sam Anderson #The Last Two Northern White Rhinos On Earth #The New York Times #lit #quotes #non fiction

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If I believe in anything, it is in the dark night of the soul. Awe is my religion, and mystery is its church.

Charles Simic, from “Charles the Obscure” in The Life of Images

#quote #Charles Simic #Charles the Obscure #The Life of Images #Orphan Factory #lit #quotes #non fiction #*

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Love is not consolation, it is light.

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

#quote #Simone Weil #Gravity and Grace #lit #quotes #philosophy #Emma Crawford #Mario von der Ruhr #Things to live by #non fiction #*

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Sometimes I have wanted to know if there is an underside to life, & if it is inverted, so that there, we live inside of light rather than below it. I have found it better to believe in everything than nothing —

Devin Kelly, from “Conditionally”

#quote #excerpt #poetry #Devin Kelly #Conditionally #Bear Review #lit #quotes

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I realized that the basic thing in life is questioning death, wanting to know how we’ll act when our time comes, and that death, or rather this questioning of death, is a conversation that takes place between infinity and eternity, and how we deal with our own death is the beginning of what is beautiful, because the absurd things in our lives, which always end before we want them to anyway, fill us, when we contemplate death, with bitterness and therefore with beauty.

Bohumil Hrabal, I Served the King of England

#quote #Bohumil Hrabal #I Served the King of England #Paul Wilson #lit #quotes

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I have known only what I don't want. I’ve always had a thorn in my side, and I’ve always thought, When this thorn is removed I’ll think about what I want. But then that particular thorn would be removed, and I’d be left feeling emptied out. In a short time another thorn would be inserted into my side. Then, once again, all I had to think about was being free of the thorn in my side. I’ve never had time to think about what I want.

Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir

#quote #Vivian Gornick #The Odd Woman and the City #The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir #The Odd Woman and the City A Memoir #lit #quotes #non fiction #*

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We were arguing. You want love to be like this every day don’t you? 92 degrees even in the shade. This intensity, this heat, sun like a disc-saw through your body.

Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

#quote #Jeanette Winterson #Written on the Body #lit #quotes #*

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Oh it is a crooked path I follow, Mama, but a straight wisdom comes from it once in a while; and once in a while a sure and beautiful joy comes from it and I will build my life on that wisdom and on that joy that comes once in a while. And give it all back to you and those who follow you, to mend all that is ruined and broken.

William Goyen, The House of Breath

#quote #William Goyen #The House of Breath #lit #quotes

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That’s how it is, isn’t it? The less love you put into things the more they resemble one another. The same goes for stories, everyone knows them by heart, but when someone tells them with love, I don’t know, they seem new.

Andrés Neuman, Traveller of the Century

#quote #Andres Neuman #Traveller of the Century #Nick Caistor #Lorenzo Garcia #lit #quotes #*

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We take almost all the decisive steps in our lives as a result of slight inner adjustments of which we are barely conscious.

W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz

#quote #W.G. Sebald #Austerlitz #Anthea Bell #lit #quotes