How Wonderful To Be Alive, He Thought. But Why Does It Always Hurt?

“I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.”

— Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil (via the-book-diaries)

“I’m not sentimental — I’m as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last — the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won’t.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn’t they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a little while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise?

Don DeLillo, White Noise (via the-book-diaries)

Charles Bukowski, "hurry slowly," from Come On In!

“Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart. The interior is therefore rather dim and poetic”

— Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie (via the-book-diaries)

“Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.”

— Albert Camus, The Fall (via the-book-diaries)

Suck on it like a good boy.

“We are all wearing masks. That is what makes us interesting.”

— Neil Gaiman, Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances