❝ There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams - not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart. ❞
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (via nisanugoo)

iflovebeblind:

“That year, a middle-aged acquaintance asked me what my favorite book was and I said, ‘On The Road.’ He smiled, said, ‘That was my favorite book when I was sixteen.’ At the time, I thought he was patronizing me, that it was going to be my favorite book forever and ever, amen. But he was right. As an adult, I’m more of a Gatsby girl—more tragic, more sad, just as interested in what America costs as what it has to offer.”

— Sarah Vowell

“She feels tender, merciful toward her younger self, for decisions made in good faith that turned out badly. When you are young, she thinks, you never believe that courage isn’t enough.” 

- Mary Gordon, The Love Of My Youth

❝ As soon as you begin to ask the question, Who loves me?
you are completely screwed, because
the next question is How Much?

and then it is hundreds of hours later,
and you are still hunched over
your flowcharts and abacus,

trying to decide if you have gotten enough.
This is the loneliest job in the world:
to be an accountant of the heart.

It is late at night. You are by yourself,
and all around you, you can hear
the sounds of people moving

in and out of love,
pushing the turnstiles, putting
their coins in the slots,

paying the price which is asked,
which constantly changes.
No one knows why. ❞
Tony Hoagland, “The Loneliest Job in the World” (via pigmenting)
❝ Trees talk to each other at night.
All fish are named either Lorna or Jack.
Before your eyeballs fall out from watching too much TV, they get very loose.
Tiny bears live in drain pipes.
If you are very very quiet you can hear the clouds rub against the sky.
The moon and the sun had a fight a long time ago.
Everyone knows at least one secret language.
When nobody is looking, I can fly.
We are all held together by invisible threads.
Books get lonely too.
Sadness can be eaten.
I will always be there. ❞
Raul Gutierrez, “Lives I’ve Told My 3 Year Old Recently” (via words-in-lines)

likeafieldmouse:

Sara de Bondt - Tree of Codes (2010)

❝ I don’t have any regrets, really, except that one. I wanted to write about you, about us, really. Do you know what I mean? I wanted to write about everything, the life we’re having and the lives we might have had. I wanted to write about all the ways we might have died. ❞
Michael Cunningham, The Hours (via pigmenting)
❝ I have calculated the total number of hours
we spend sleeping beside each other in a week

and I wanted to tell you it could be considered
a full-time job. We could be eligible for healthcare
benefits, could probably even pay for a mortgage

by now. I remind myself of this, in daylight, when
I miss you and cannot reach across the bed

for the comforting filling and refilling
of your chest. Such a strange affair
we are having on each other; these hours

that I have not lost but do not remember.
This cannot be the best of love: to drool

on someone’s collarbone or inhale an elbow to
the jaw or be woken by the most ungraceful sounds
of the body. But what is it if not the softening

of grips? A letting go of. Your heart
finally slowly that stubborn, lonely march. ❞
Sierra DeMulder, “These Hours I Have Not Lost But Do Not Remember” (via fleurishes)
❝ I was born with a reading list I will never finish. ❞
Maud Casey (via thegirlandherbooks)
❝ He knew a lot about food, fish, planets - he was an information fetishist, and I was impressed. He knew that a pound of a certain smoked fish in Iceland was the equivalent in benzopyrene to four thousand cigarettes. He was the first person I’d ever heard pronounce Reykjavik out loud. He knew that human beings never dream smells. Later, of course, I discovered the dust bunnies under the bed of his soul: He liked to do weird things with cameras; he could never say anything sweet or romantic; his heart was as frozen as a winter pipe - it was no wonder he knew so much about Iceland. By the end of our marriage I was sitting in our house in outer suburbia, wondering, Where does love go? When something you have taped on the wall falls off, what has happened to the stickum? It has relaxed. It has accumulated an assortment of hairs and fuzzes. It has said Fuck it and given up. It doesn’t go anywhere special, it’s just gone. Energy is created, and then it is destroyed. So much for the laws of physics. So much for chemistry. So much for not so much. ❞
Lorrie Moore, Anagrams  (via beautyisanillusion)
❝ My wife is always on top because we are not ready for a baby. Gravity tells her uterus no, tells my sperm to find another room. If this poem were true, I would be dumb as shit. ❞
Gregory Sherl, In Vermont No One Can Hear You Scream (via infelicific)
❝ You wear earmuffs and pretend we’re in a silent movie.
I mouth Olive juice, but I really do love you. ❞
Gregory Sherl (via pigmenting)
❝ We are created by being destroyed. ❞
Franz Wright, from “Letter” (via the-final-sentence)