painsmemory

[painsmemory]

“One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony.”

— Haruki Murakami, from his novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, translated by Philip Gabriel

#Haruki Murakami #Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage #Philip Gabriel #w #words #q #quotes #fragments #selections #lit #literature #excerpts

[painsmemory]

“The Buddhists say there are 121 states of consciousness. Of these, only three involve misery or suffering. Most of us spend our time moving back and forth between these three.”

— Jenny Offill, from her novel Dept. of Speculation

#Jenny Offill #Dept. of Speculation #Buddhists #misery #excerpts #fragments #selections #w #words #q #quotes

[painsmemory]

For the Greeks, memory was ‘the waker of longing.’

J. D. McClatchy, from The Poet’s Notebook: Excerpts from the Notebooks of 26 American Poets, eds. Stephen Kuusisto, Deborah Tall, & David Weiss (W. W. Norton & Co., 1995)

#J. D. McClatchy #Greeks #memory #painsmemory #excerpts #fragments #selections

[painsmemory]

The worst pain… isn’t the pain you feel at the time, it’s the pain you feel later on when there’s nothing you can do about it. They say that time heals all wounds, but we never live long enough to test that theory…

José Saramago, The Cave (via quotespile)

#José Saramago #The Cave #lit #literature #fragments #selections #q #qutoes #w #words #pain #wounds #excerpts #painsmemory

[painsmemory]

Memories come to mind like excavated statues that have misplaced their heads.

Wislawa Szymborska, from her poem Travel Elegy, collected in View with a Grain of Sand, translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh 

#Wislawa Szymborska #Travel Elegy #View with a Grain of Sand #translation #simile #lit #literature #w #words #q #quote #fragments #selections #poem #poetry #polish literature #memories #painsmemory

[painsmemory]

Why do we treat the fleeting day with so much needless fear and sorrow? It’s in its nature not to stay: Today is always gone tomorrow.

Wislawa Szymborska, from her poem Nothing Twice, collected in View with a Grain of Sand, translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

#Wislawa Szymborska #Nothing Twice #View with a Grain of Sand #translation #poem #poetry #lit #literature #excerpts #fragments #selections #Polish literature #w #words #sorrow

[painsmemory]

[..] All around, as far as my gaze reaches, everything is the pale black colour of rain. I’m full of odd sensations, all of them cold. Right now it seems to me that the landscape is all a fog, and that the buildings are the fog that hides it. A pre-neurosis born of what I’ll be when I no longer am grips my body and soul. An absurd remembrance of my future death sends a shiver down my spine. In the fog of my intuition, I feel like dead matter fallen in the rain and mourned by the howling wind. And the chill of what I won’t feel gnaws at my present heart.

Fernando Pessoa, from The Book of Disquiet, ed. & trans. by Richard Zenith (Penguin Classics, 2002)

#Fernando Pessoa #The Book of Disquiet #translation #Richard Zenith #lit #literature #q #quotes #w #words #fragments #selections #rain #fog

[painsmemory]

People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget.

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (via quotespile)

#James Baldwin #Giovanni’s Room #lit #literature #w #words #q #quotes #fragments #selections #pain #madness #remember #forget #painsmemory

[painsmemory]

I love you the way I love the sunset or the moonlight: I want the moment to remain, but all I want to possess in it is the sensation of possessing it.

Fernando Pessoa, from The Book of Disquiet, ed. & trans. by Richard Zenith (Penguin Classics, 2002)

#Fernando Pessoa #the book of disquiet #Richard Zenith #translation #lit #literature #q #quote #w #words #fragments #selections #sunset #moonlight #possess

[painsmemory]

RAINY LANDSCAPE

  It smells to me of coldness, of regret, of the hopelessness of every road and of every ideal ever dreamed up.

— Fernando Pessoa, from The Book of Disquiet, ed. & trans. by Richard Zenith (Penguin Classics, 2002)

Photography by Gérard Castello-Lopes, Escosia, Scotland, 1985

#Fernando Pessoa #The Book of Disquiet #translation #Richard Zenith #photograph #Gérard Castello-Lopes #coldness #regret #rainy landscape #lit #literature #w #words #q #quotes #fragments #selections

[painsmemory]

The sweetness of the past? Our memory of it, since to remember it is to make it present, and it isn’t present nor ever can be – absurdity, my love, absurdity.

Fernando Pessoa, from The Book of Disquiet, ed. & trans. by Richard Zenith (Penguin Classics, 2002)

#Fernando Pessoa #The Book of Disquiet #translation #Richard Zenith #lit #literature #w #words #q #quotes #fragments #selections #past #sweetness #memory #absurdity #painsmemory

[painsmemory]

You were unsure which pain is worse – the shock of what happened or the ache for what never will.

Simon Van Booy, from Everything Beautiful Began After (Harpe rPerennial, 2011)         (via memoryslandscape)

#Simon Van Booy #Everything Beautiful Began After #lit #literature #q #quotes #w #words #fragments #selections #pain

[painsmemory]

But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (via quotespile)

#Margaret Atwood #The Handmaid’s Tale #painsmemory #pain #lit #literature #q #quotes #w #words #fragments #selections #shadow

[painsmemory]

Pain is never added to pain. It multiplies.

Sherman Alexie, War Dances (via quotespile)

#Sherman Alexie #War Dances #pain #painsmemory #q #quotes #w #words #fragments #selections

[painsmemory]

Pain is nature’s way of telling us that something is wrong. Patiently, pain goes on telling us this, long after we’ve got the message.

Martin Amis, Money (via quotespile)

#Martin Amis #Money #pain #nature #painsmemory #quotes #w #words #excerpts #fragments #selections

[painsmemory]

I read biographies because I want to know how people suffered in the past; how they endured, and is it different, now, for us?

Tony Hoagland, from his poem The Edge of the Frame, collected in  Application for Release from the Dream: Poems

#Tony Hoagland #poem #poetry #The Edge of the Frame #application for release from the dream #lit #literature #excerpts #w #words #fragments #selections

[painsmemory]

I am never alone, sweet musician, for this I have discovered about the ocean: boundless as dream, it catches every memory we may care to hold fast, and casts it as a shimmering shadow in water:

J. Neil C. Garcia, from “Eurydice,” published at Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture (2013) 

#J. Neil C. Garcia #Eurydice #poem #poetry #Philippine literature #ocean #dream #memory #shadow #w #words #fragments #selections #excerpts