smokefalls:

The cruelest person we love is the first.

Megan Fernandes, “Philadelphia Sonnet” from I Do Everything I’m Told

smokefalls:

In the daily, lived sense, we encounter each other as wet or rugged, dangerous or miraculous, but always opaque, surfaces. Communication is a bare need. To explain ourselves to each other. To explain ourselves to ourselves. For this reason, I suspect, lies live longer than bombs.

Cynthia Dewi Oka, “Window #033” from A Tinderbox in Three Acts

dk-thrive:

Who’s to say where any of us ‘should’ be and what we 'should’ be doing

But aren’t these shoulds just the iron buttresses of false wants? Who’s to say where any of us should be and what we should be doing at any one time?

— Andre Dubus III, Such Kindness: A Novel (W.W. Norton, June 6, 2023)

themotherofrevelation:

You must vow to honor me as the Great Goddess/Universal Mother. If you do not, eye shall instantly exit my body, for eye will know that the time is not yet right for me to act fully in the world.

flowerytale:

Kathleen Graber, from “Another Poem about Trains”, The Eternal City: Poems

flowerytale:

Sharon Olds, from “Something Is Happening”, One Secret Thing: Poems

dk-thrive:

Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second. 

— Marc Riboud, French Photographer (1923-2016)

flowerytale:

Jeffrey Eugenides, from The Marriage Plot

aflawedfashion:

Piper & Alex | Orange is the New Black 1x08

dk-thrive:

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”

— Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967 (Ballantine Books, April 7, 1998) (via Whiskey River)

dk-thrive:

You wake up one day and realize what you’ve become, what you allow

You wake up one day and realize what you’ve become, what you allow, and you have to stare down into the pit at yourself, at your own choices, at the ways in which you have been cunning and stupid and false and wretched to keep up with the world around you. How does anyone bear themselves? How can anyone stare into the darkest corners of humanity and return to the office, enter the meeting room, and deliver the presentation? How do we all just keep working? The CEO nods at me. My fake self opens her mouth and begins.

— Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe: A Novel (Scribner, July 11, 2023)