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I realised then that I never thought about the past. I lived in a perpetual present and I was gradually forgetting my story. At first, I shrugged, telling myself that it would be no great loss, since nothing had happened to me, but soon I was shocked by that thought. After all, if I was a human being, my story was as important as that of King Lear or of Prince Hamlet that William Shakespeare had taken the trouble to relate in detail. - I who have never known men by Jacqueline Harpman

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No life is ordinary, the book seems to say. No life is without hope, without light, even during the unimaginable. - Introduction by Sophie Mackintosh in I who have never known men by Jacqueline Harpman

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I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever colour, I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and the cruelty which was part of its loveliness. Above all I hated her. For she belonged to the magic and the loveliness. She had left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it. - Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

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‘I tell her so. I warn her. I say this is not a man who will help you when he sees you break up. Only the best can do that. The best – and sometimes the worst.’ - Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

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Reading the Complete Poems of the Sumerian priestess Enheduana, the world's first named author, as edited and translated by the Sumerologist Sophus Helle. Call me corny if you like, but I get a genuine chill thinking that this woman is speaking to me (and to every reader) across the gulf of four millennia.

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Change is ongoing. Everything changes in some way—size, position, composition, frequency, velocity, thinking, whatever. Every living thing, every bit of matter, all the energy in the universe changes in some way. - Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

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when your art program’s closing message hits you straight in the heart and makes you stop and contemplate the state of it all

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“No, I mean it. This business sounds half antebellum revival and half science fiction. I don’t trust it. Freedom is dangerous, Cory, but it’s precious, too. You can’t just throw it away or let it slip away. You can’t sell it for bread and pottage.” - The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

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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