I hate being bitter and selfish. It’s not who I really am. At least, it’s not who I used to be, and it’s not who I want to be. Therefore, I don’t consider it to be me. I don’t hate you as much as I pretend I do. I’ve just been hurt by someone, and I feel as though I’ll feel better when I take it out on you ( Read more... )

Don’t try to force me onto the paper. It will never work. I control you, you do not control me. Don’t think that just because you take the trouble to sit down that I will submissively fly down onto the paper. I belong to myself, not to you. You are nothing to me, merely a medium I work through. There are billions of others more worthy than ( Read more... )

I am not a fictional character. Don’t dare make that mistake. I have feelings, and emotions, and a life and a past just like you. You see me as being trapped in paper and ink, but I see you as being trapped in a three-dimensional world that controls your mind and makes you believe that nothing is possible. Indeed, I pity you. You’re nothing ( Read more... )

"It suddenly seemed to me that I was lonely, that everyone was forsaking me and going away from me. Of course, Anyone is entitled to ask who 'everyone' was. For though I had been living almost eight years in Petersburg I had hardly an acquaintance. But what did I want with acquaintances ( Read more... )

"...for when you are in love you are made all over again. The person who loves you has picked you out of the great mass of uncreated clay which is humanity to make something out of, and the poor lumpish clay which is you wants to find out what it has been made into. But at the same time, you, in the act of loving somebody, become real, cease to ( Read more... )

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"'There were a lot of clouds,' his uncle said, and continued to look straight before him, 'but they were blowing fast, so there was a lot of sunshine too. Right when they began to lower your father into the ground, into his grave, a cloud came over and there was a shadow just like iron, and a perfectly magnificent butterfly settled on the--coffin ( Read more... )

"He thought--while his hand moved rapidly--what a power there was in words; later, to those who heard them, but first for the one who found them; a healing power, a solution, like the breaking of a barrier. He thought, perhaps the basic secret the scientists have never discovered, the first fount of life, is that which happens when a thought ( Read more... )

"I will not so profane the dignity
Of sorrow. Never any tears for me!
Why, there is nothing more sublime than tears,
Nothing!--Shall I make them ridiculous
In my poor person?"

--Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Begerec

"We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom. We raised our children and reared our crops; we let infants grow and property develop. Our manhood was defined by acquisitions. Our womanhood by acquiescence. And the smell of your fruit and the labor of your days we abhorred."--Toni Morrison, The ( Read more... )