“To Learn Which Questions Are Unanswerable, And Not To Answer Them: This Skill Is Most Needful In Times

“To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin, from The Left Hand of Darkness

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet

“And maybe that’s all I wanted—to be asked a question and have it cover me, like a roof the width of myself.”

— Ocean Vuong, from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

“[…] the openness to revelation. Which is another way of saying, to being wrong about what is possible and true.”

— Karen Russell, from “The Ghost Birds”

But, anyway, aren’t there moments that are better than knowing something, and sweeter?

— Mary Oliver, from “Snowy Night”

“In the end I would rather wonder than know.”

— Mary Ruefle, from “On Secrets,” in Madness, Rack, and Honey

More Posts from Sayingounprovoked and Others

sayingounprovoked

1 year ago

“JAW BONE” MOUTHPIECE | S/S 1998 SHAUN LEANE for ALEXANDER MCQUEEN

“Cast and polished aluminum, with broken and missing teeth, attached to the face with curved metal ear-loops and hooks.” [width: 6″]

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sayingounprovoked

1 year ago

Season 1 and 4 sketches :D

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please tma gawd I'm chewing on them make them hug

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sayingounprovoked

1 year ago

doomed by the narrative but not to death. doomed to survive. doomed to stay alive inside the story. doomed to never escape the narrative, not even through death. you are allowed no exit. there is no way out for you and there never was. you couldn’t die if you wanted to. the narrative has a hold on you and it won’t let go. death is too sweet a doom for you. the story has something much worse in mind. there is no way out.

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the terror happened to my buddy francis

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sayingounprovoked

1 year ago

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sayingounprovoked

1 year ago

If we’re being honest, most of us study our favourite character less like an entomologist studies a bug and more like an astronomer studies a distant star: drawing complicated inferences from extremely limited data, then getting tetchy about it when somebody else draws incompatible but equally well-supported inferences from the same data because it’s the fucking principle of the thing.

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but yeah I actually like to poke him w a stick and gasp

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sayingounprovoked

1 year ago

that pose was too cute, had to make it fitzier...

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AWWWWW the terror fitzier i love this it's gonna make me a better person throws a grenade

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sayingounprovoked

2 years ago

spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood have fun out there and try your best =) spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood spill blood

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sayingounprovoked

1 year ago

I must retire to my chamber now that you've turned on the biggie big head light but lament no more for I shall be vocal stimming very loudly from there so you could still enjoy the abundant warmth of my company

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sayingounprovoked

2 years ago

Im enjoying the longevity of tumblrs recontextualization style of humor. a seemingly innocuous post followed by like "posts that a gnome would make" or like "are you a phone"

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sayingounprovoked

1 year ago

But I am afraid; I have a nameless fear of that transformation. I have not yet grown accustomed to this world, which seems a goodly one. Why should I move on to another one? I should dearly like to remain among the meanings I have grown fond of, and if something really does have to change, I should at least like to be able to live among dogs […]

from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke

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quotes q rainer maria rilke

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