The two men who have done the greatest harm to the world are Christ and Columbus. Christ taught us guilt and sacrifice, to live only in the other world, and Columbus discovered America and materialism.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934 // Anaïs Nin
Feeling then your warmth beside me
Little body, thigh and knee
In these arms, I thought, I’ll hide me
Here’s where they can bury me.
Sentimental Song No. 78 // Bertolt Brecht
I just wanted to tell you that with all your faults I love you. I love or revere very few people. As for the rest, I’m ashamed of my immense indifference to them… But for those I love, nothing and no one, neither I nor certainly they themselves, can ever make me stop loving them.
The First Man // Albert Camus
Twelve years now and we’re still eating off the ordinary:
We left our wedding china behind, afraid that it might crack.
We’re here for the time being, we answer to the query,
But nothing is more permanent than the temporary.
After a Greek Proverb // A.E. Stallings
Serpents change their outward skin and
permit their souls to grow and age.
// Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov
…a dark angel whispering to me to be easy on myself.
Half-Hanged Mary // Margaret Atwood
She seemed, at once, some demon’s mistress, or the demon’s self.
// John Keats
Saints have no moderation,
nor do poets,
just exuberance.
The Saints Come Marching In // Anne Sexton
A savage desire for strong emotions and sensations burns inside me: a rage against this soft-tinted, shallow, standardized and sterilized life, and a mad craving to smash something up, a department store, say, or a cathedral, or myself.
Steppenwolf // Hermann Hesse
I have never been able to understand people with consistent lives – people who, for example, grow up in a liberal Catholic household and stay that way; or who in junior high school are already laying down a record on which to run for president one day. Imagine having no discarded personalities, no vestigial selves, no visible ruptures with yourself, no gulf of self-forgetfulness, nothing that requires explanation, no alien version of yourself that requires humor and accommodation. What kind of life is that?
Tongues Untied // Michael Warner
