things they forgot to tell me

"All this clear only in retrospect. Therefore: Be risky."

Wed, 15 May 2013 21:48:02 -0400

“All this clear only in retrospect. Therefore: Be risky.”

- Grace Paley, quoted by Nell Freudenberg in an interview for The Believer (via leopoldgursky)

"I heard it too. The sound of something important to you disappearing."

Wed, 08 May 2013 19:35:24 -0400

“I heard it too. The sound of something important to you disappearing.”

- 告白 (via blua)

"I keep thinking you already know. I keep thinking I’ve sent you letters that were only ever written..."

Wed, 08 May 2013 19:25:48 -0400

“I keep thinking you already know. I keep thinking I’ve sent you letters that were only ever written in my mind.”

- Iain Thomas (via diluvie)

"In the novel or the journal you get the journey. In a poem you get the arrival."

Wed, 08 May 2013 19:23:57 -0400

““In the novel or the journal you get the journey. In a poem you get the arrival.””

- May Sarton (via theparisreview)

connotativewords: I normally would not put up another person’s...

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 23:09:09 -0500

connotativewords:

I normally would not put up another person’s writing, but this one was a must. A fine young fellow, Danny Higa, posted this a long time ago as a text post. His tumblr is now deactivated from my knowledge (I think he still has a twitter). Thank goodness I still had this post on my archive. This was one of the posts that inspired me to write – to really write. No excuses, no hesitations, nothing. It made me think hard and clear about the one person who would not leave my mind. I gathered my thoughts, all tangled and twisted, and wrote about her.

Danny, you probably won’t ever see this, but I hoped to one day have the talent you possess. And I want to sincerely thank you for inspiring me.

I just wanted to share this with you all. Hopefully it will inspire you too.

"It hit me the other day, reading the poetry of Vicente Aleixandre at a bus stop near a high school:..."

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 23:08:54 -0500

“It hit me the other day, reading the poetry of Vicente Aleixandre at a bus stop near a high school: poems are like teenagers. They’re dressed up funny but they all kind of look the same. They say obvious things in incomprehensible slang. They come on strong one minute and the next minute refuse to tell us anything. They traffic in vast sensitivity, even hysteria, all the while obsessed with keeping cool. They won’t settle down and talk to us like grown-ups. In short, they’re exasperating. It’s no wonder we all wrote poems in our adolescence. You did so, I saw you.
Still, they give me much pleasure—I’m just talking about poems now—and I don’t really want my poetry to grow up. When I come across poetry that has straightened itself out to conduct itself like an adult without any nonsense, it makes for very stale reading, as does the stuff that has disconnected from passion and impulse in favor of intellectual gamesmanship. I might admire it, but it doesn’t cling to me. I can’t love the poetry that sits around in a well-furnished room with its well-weathered friends talking about complicated political situations and other hobgoblins of grown-up life. I love the ones that are loving somebody, longing for somebody, dancing all night, driving home listening to the radio, and staring out their bedroom windows at the cruel, cruel world.”

- Daniel Handler, The Believer (May 2012)

"You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no..."

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 23:11:23 -0500

“You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.”

- Richard P. Feynman (via lunaoki)

"I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it."

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 23:02:18 -0500

“I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it.”

- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (via decrepito)

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

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 19:37:41 -0500

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

- Simon Van Booy, Everything Beautiful Began After (via cavum)

"Sometimes I wanted to peel away all of my skin and find a different me underneath."

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 19:35:15 -0500

“Sometimes I wanted to peel away all of my skin and find a different me underneath.”

- Francesca Lia Block (via cavum)

"Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it."

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 22:45:48 -0400

“Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.”

- David Foster Wallace (via 24ribs)

"Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated."

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 22:37:47 -0400

“Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated.”

- Alphonse De Lamartine (via phytos)

"I still catch myself feeling blue about things that don’t matter anymore."

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 22:35:09 -0400

“I still catch myself feeling blue about things that don’t matter anymore.”

- Kurt Vonnegut (via thehipsterkids)

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 21:13:33 -0400

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

- Eleanor Roosevelt, This is My Story (via thehipsterkids)

"We’d said we’d keep in touch. But touch is not something you can keep; as soon as it’s gone, it’s..."

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 23:25:25 -0400

“We’d said we’d keep in touch. But touch is not something you can keep; as soon as it’s gone, it’s gone. We should have said we’d keep in words, because they are all we can string between us—words on a telephone line, words appearing on a screen.”

- David Levithan (via loveyourchaos)

"A map is more unreal (Oh) Than where you’ve been Or how you feel And it’s impossible to tell How..."

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 00:55:20 -0400

“A map is more unreal
(Oh) Than where you’ve been
Or how you feel
And it’s impossible to tell
How important something was
And what you might have missed out on
And how it might have changed it all
Did I, did I miss out on you”

- (via hollis-queens)

"It is dreadful when something weighs on your mind, not to have a soul to unburden yourself to. You..."

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 20:33:08 -0400

“It is dreadful when something weighs on your mind, not to have a soul to unburden yourself to. You know what I mean. I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.”

- Frédéric Chopin (via dearscience)

Photo

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 20:32:48 -0400

"… it’s wonderful that nothing you write is ever going to be as beautiful as what’s in your head,..."

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 20:32:23 -0400

“… it’s wonderful that nothing you write is ever going to be as beautiful as what’s in your head, because that gap is where the art can enter and begin to stretch its limbs.”

- Lauren Groff (via leopoldgursky)

"People change. Feelings change. It doesn’t mean that the love once shared wasn’t true and real. It..."

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 00:46:21 -0400

“People change. Feelings change. It doesn’t mean that the love once shared wasn’t true and real. It simply just means that sometimes when people grow, they grow apart.”

- 500 Days of Summer (via undinele)