“There is nothing in the world so easy to explain as failure - it is, after all, what everybody does all the time.” — Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
“Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.” — Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“We who fight for our dream, suffer far more when it doesn’t work out, because we cannot fall back on the old excuse: “Oh, well, I didn’t really want it anyway.” We do want it and know that we have staked everything on it and that the path of the personal calling is no easier than any other path, except that our whole heart is in this journey.” — Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“It now lately sometimes seemed like a kind of black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. God or Satan, politics or grammar, topology or philately- the object seemed incidental to this will to give oneself away, utterly. To games or needles, to some other person. Something pathetic about it. A flight-from in the form of a plunging-into.” — David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
“Boo, I think I no longer believe in monsters as faces in the floor or feral infants or vampires or whatever. I think at seventeen now I believe the only real monsters might be the type of liar where there’s simply no way to tell. The ones who give nothing away.” — David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
“There are, apparently, persons who are deeply afraid of their own emotions, particularly the painful ones. Grief, regret, sadness. Sadness especially, perhaps. Dolores describes these persons as afraid of obliteration, emotional engulfment. As if something truly and thoroughly felt would have no end or bottom. Would become infinite and engulf.” — David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
“Because nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘you like stuff.’ Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, ‘you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness’.” — John Green (x)
(Source: dotcomleuven, via dduane)
(Source: emilialua1, via prettywildmostlyfree)
“If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Source: truthbyella, via slaughterhousefive)
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