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I wonder how many of the people in Olivar have any idea what they’re doing.” “I don’t think many do,” I said. “I don’t think they’d dare let themselves know.” He looked at me, and I looked back. I’m still learning how dogged people can be in denial, even when their freedom or their lives are at stake. He’s lived with it longer. I wonder how. - Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

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And thou, profoundest Hell, Receive thy new possessor, one who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time! The mind is its own place and in itself Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. - Paradise Lost by John Milton

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All I do is observe and take notes, trying to put things down in ways that are as powerful, as simple, and as direct as I feel them. I can never do that. I keep trying, but I can’t. I’m not good enough as a writer or poet or whatever it is I need to be. I don’t know what to do about that. It drives me frantic sometimes. I’m getting better, but so slowly. The thing is, even with my writing problems, every time I understand a little more, I wonder why it’s taken me so long—why there was ever a time when I didn’t understand a thing so obvious and real and true. - Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

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SOMETIMES NAMING A THING—giving it a name or discovering its name—helps one to begin to understand it. Knowing the name of a thing and knowing what that thing is for gives me even more of a handle on it. - Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

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“What are we supposed to do if you die?” she demanded, and I think she was crying. “What do we do if they shoot you over some damn rabbits?” “Live!” Dad said. “That’s all anybody can do right now. Live. Hold out. Survive. I don’t know whether good times are coming back again. But I know that won’t matter if we don’t survive these times.” - Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

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Grandmother wasn’t afraid of falling or losing her way, but she knew the darkness was absolute, and she knew what it was like when you lose your hold and there’s nothing left to go by. All the same, she said to herself, I know perfectly well what everything looks like. I don’t have to see it. - The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

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Sappho says that to die is evil: so the gods judge. For they do not die. —Aristotle Rhetoric 1398b = Sappho fr. 201 Voigt - If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Anne Carson

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We were never looking in the same direction. We were always looking at each other. Standing at the edge of the water, looking to the opposite shore. - I want to eat your pancreas by Yoru Sumino

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Pride and PowerPoint

by pinna.blu_ on ig

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“The coffee was 1500 won. They were drinking the same coffee, so they must have known how much it was. Tell me—don’t I deserve to drink a 1500-won cup of coffee? I don’t care if it’s 1500 won or 15 million won. It’s nobody’s business what I do with the money my husband made. Am I stealing from you? I suffered deathly pain having our child. My routine, my career, my dreams, my entire life, my self—I gave it all up to raise our child. And I’ve become vermin. What do I do now?” - Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo

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Grumble grumble…

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Normal is often treated as a moral judgment, when it is often simply a statistical matter. The question of what everyone else is doing is less important than the question of what works for the two people in the actual relationship. It matters that everyone’s needs are carefully considered and respected, not that everyone is doing the same thing. - Ace by Angela Chen

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Centuries of centuries pass, but events take place only in the present; countless men are battling in the air, on land, and at sea, yet all that really happens is happening to me. - The Garden of The Branching Paths by Jorge Luis Borges

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If honour and wisdom and happiness are not my lot, may they be the lot of others. - The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges

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Once I am dead, there will be no want of pious hands to hurl me over the railing. My grave will be the bottomless air; my body will plummet for a long, long time, decaying and dissolving in the wind generated by my fall, which will be infinite. - The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges

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I would suggest that the failure of our friend’s novel should be blamed on this disastrous coincidence. Also— and I want to be absolutely honest—on the book’s flawed construction and on a number of stiff, pretentious passages that describe the sea. - A Glimpse into the Work of Herbert Quain by Jorge Luis Borges

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They respect the dictates of chance, to which they hand over their lives, their hopes, and their wild panic - The Lottery Of Babylon by Jorge Luis Borges