#don’t let my face fool you i am dying on the inside

[fireis-catching]

a lil monday work selfie 🖤

[seraph-skies]

let me bathe in demonic light || a copia playlist (x) (x)

an 11-song character study

i. get famous the mountain goats you took notes on what you had to do to get the piece of the pie that belonged to you you've been waiting for this ever since you were young be careful not to choke on your tongue

ii. working for the knife mitski i always knew the world moves on i just didn't know it would go without me, i start the day high and it ends so low 'cause i'm working for the knife

iii. the family jewels marina welcome to the family jewels coal to diamonds, sold to fools welcome to the family jewels simmerin' sapphire can't keep his cool i can't keep my cool i can't keep my cool

iv. let me bathe in demonic light the mountain goats someday the old flesh will give way to the new find a functioning mirror inside and slip right through and there, there i'll be and who, who's coming with me? to show me my one true face when i arrive at my preordained place

v. shelved the mountain goats not gonna sit up and beg not gonna do tricks not gonna stand here on a sound stage, tethered to a crucifix

the ride’s over, i know but i’m not ready to go

vi. waiting for a war the morning benders i’m getting tired of living like i’m dying while the world is moving on here i am in a graveyard, waiting for a war i’m here, i’m calling out your name i’ve been here before 

vii. the house wins ok go if evil were a lesser breed than justice after all these years, the righteous would have freed the world of sin the house wins the house always wins

viii. microphone fish in a birdcage show us how you dream lend us your sight those surrounded by fog are craving a light break the pattern and shatter the glass rise above your own body, through your canvas

ix. one more time with feeling regina spektor you thought by now you’d be so much better than you are you thought by now they’d see that you have come so far and the pride inside their eyes would synchronize into a love you’ve never known, so much more than you’ve been shown

hold on, one more time with feeling try it again, breathing’s just a rhythm

x. heel turn 2 the mountain goats let all the trash rain down from way up in the rafters i’m walking out of here in one piece, don’t care what comes after

drive the wedge, torch the bridge i don’t wanna die in here

i don’t wanna die in here

xi. all these things that i’ve done the killers over and in, last call for sin while everyone’s lost, the battle is won with all these things that i’ve done

[martybaker]

I have many thoughts about retired Dream and his struggles with the human condition. Here’s one of them.

My heart’s ailment

or Dream gets sick for the first time since becoming human

________________________

“I am dying.”

“Uhuh, sure you are, darling. Come on, sit up for a bit. Drink this, it’ll help.”

Hob sits down on the bed where Dream is bundled in blankets, looking quite miserable indeed. It’s just a common cold though and it will pass, but it wouldn’t be like Dream to not turn it into a dramatic spectacle.

To be fair, it is his first cold since turning human, which means it is the first cold he’s ever experienced in all the billions of years of his existence, so Hob is willing to offer him some lenience. Besides, he feels a little guilty for bringing the damn thing in from university and getting away with very mild symptoms while his husband’s condition got more severe, due to his body’s lack of experience with combatting sicknesses.

Hob unravels the blankets and helps the disgruntled cat to sit up, rubbing his back and pushing a steaming mug into his hands.

Dream stares at it with suspicion.

“Is it poison?”

You know what, scratch that, no lenience for this oversized billion-years old baby, Christ.

“No it’s not bloody poison, it does not even taste that bad, actually. Come on now.”

“I wish it were poison,” Dream grumbles.

Hob rolls his eyes at the theatrics, having built an imunity against them, they no longer phase him. “Sure, and then your sister would finally end me as well, what a lovely thought.”

He inspects Dream’s temperature with his hand. Warm, but not feverish anymore. Thank heavens. The worst days when Dream burned like a star, coughed like a heavy smoker and couldn’t speak are behind them. His voice still sounds rougher than usual, but the cough has almost entirely subsided.

Hob pets the blankets where he’s calculated Dream’s knee should be.

“You’re getting better. It was worse yesterday, wasn’t it? Give it a few more days and you’ll be back up on your feet. You know what they say though, positive mindset is half of the way to recovery. It certainly wouldn’t hurt if you could cheer up a little.”

Dream slurps his medicine, making a face.

“It’s not my fault that human bodies are so weak and fragile even such a measly ailment can render them so useless.”

Hob snorts. “And yet, we persevere.”

“Hmph,” is the only answer he gets to that.

When the medicine is swallowed, Hob takes the mug back and puts it on the table where a bowl of steaming broth is waiting.

He reaches out to caress Dream’s cheek. Dream closes his eyes with a sigh and leans into the hold.

“Do you think you’d be able to drink some soup as well, love? It would help you regain strength.”

Dream’s eyes shoot open and he gives the bowl of soup a look of pure disdain, leaning away.

Hob sighs. “Your weak and fragile body needs sustenance.”

Dream turns up his nose at him.

“Nope, okay, I get it,” Hob gets up, feigning resignation. “You’re misery personified and i am a fool for trying to help, you can go back to moping in your cacoon, all by your lonesome.”

Look, Hob’s not above emotional blackmailing if that’s what’s necessary to get his pain-in-the-arse husband to make some effort to get better. The stupid moron can’t get it into his head that humans can’t live on air.

Luckily, Hob’s dirty little trick works like a charm, he only manages to take one step away from the bed, when he hears a muttered “Don’t go,” and two pale hands wrap like tentacles around his middle.

Hob sighs and lets himself be pulled back onto the bed.

“You’re so difficult sometimes, and yet, i persevere,” he teases.

“Because,” Dream prompts, plastered against Hob’s back, lips moving against his spine.

Hob huffs a laugh. “Wow, you’re so blatantly fishing for it.”

He wraps his hands around Dream’s and sighs. He gives in, as he always does, because though he may be immune to Dream’s theatrics he is not immune to the vast well of love towards this being, which bubbles inside him and, inexplicably, only seems to grow larger with each day, each year, each century.

“Because i love you,” he sighs.

“Mmm,” Dream hums contently, the vibrations tickling Hob’s back. He nuzzles against him like a kitten.

And then, miraculously:

“…I don’t wish to be alone, and i don’t wish for Despair’s company either.”

There’s a pause, and a deep sigh.

“I wish for yours. And I…appreciate your care. And patience.”

Hob chuckles. “Ah, feelings, sharing them is like pulling teeth, isn’t it?”

He’s teasing, but relief floods him knowing that they are making progress. However hard the human condition is for Dream, he has not yet said he regrets it. He has not yet said he regrets choosing a mundane life with Hob, and Hob will do his damnest to make sure he never does.

Even if it entails such horrifying lessons as talking about one’s feelings, admitting vulnerability, asking for help and letting your loved ones take care of you.

Expectedly, Dream bristles at the jab at his notorious shortcomings in the emotion-sharing department. “Hob. I have been sufficiently chastised, there’s no need for further commentary.”

Hob chuckles. “Yeah, you’re right. C’mere, Lord of Moping,” he pulls Dream into his arms, holding him close, and kisses his maudlin musings away.

__________________

[aishangotome]

Alfons Sylvatica: [Blind Love] Chapter 22

Chapter 21

♡———♡

Kate: L-let me go. I can’t go get Roger like this.

Alfons: I don’t want to. …Look this way, Kate.

When he whispers to me in a sweet voice, as if he's soothing a kitten, it's hard to keep my face turned away.

But as I persist, his lips come close enough to touch my earlobe...

Alfons: If you don't, I'll bite those cute, pointed lips.

Alfons: I'm going to mess you up so bad that you'll be dying to have me inside of you right now.

Shameless words were whispered in my ear along with his breath.

Kate: N-no... this is wrong...!

Alfons: ................

(......!)

When I hurriedly turned to face Alfons, I saw a much gentler smile than I expected—and my heart was deeply shaken.

Alfons: You really are... such a lovely person.

Kate: ......

Alfons: So innocent.

Once again, I'm being toyed with.

Even so... for just a moment, I felt like I caught a glimpse of real love.

I get carried away by that alone, so I guess I really am as innocent as Alfons says.

(But... even if I'm innocent, it doesn't matter.)

(Because I'm happy to feel like I'm truly reflected in your eyes.)

While watching me gaze back without a word of protest, Alfons continued speaking with amusement.

Alfons: Since you're keeping me waiting, I assume you'll be providing appropriate services?

Kate: S-services...?

Alfons: I'm looking forward to it.

His seductive smile, the kind you'd see on a bed, makes my face flush.

After looking at me with satisfaction, Alfons raised his voice toward the ceiling.

Alfons: So, Roger!

Alfons: I think you can hear me, but I've come back to life, so please check my vitals!

(That's right...!)

(Roger has really good hearing, so he must have already noticed that Alfons woke up—)

As if to confirm my prediction, Roger and Elbert calmly descend the stairs.

I hurriedly get out of bed and straighten up, and Roger raises the corner of his mouth as if to tease me.

Roger: One minute you're clinging to a living corpse and crying, the next minute you're getting cozy. I was wondering when to come in.

(A living corpse... ... as I thought!)

It seems that even when I was shown an illusion of Alfons dying and I was crying, Roger could still clearly hear Alfons' heartbeat.

Kate: It's not fair that I was the only one who had to go through such a terrible experience...

Roger: If you have complaints, tell that man over there.

Alfons: It's rather uncouth to eavesdrop on the emotional reunion of a couple in love, isn't it?

Roger: It was my duty as a surgeon. I didn't want to hear it either.

Elbert: ...Al.

Suddenly, Elbert walked up to Alfons' bed.

Alfons: ...Elbert. What is it?

Elbert took out a piece of paper.

(Is that...the note Alfons left behind?)

Elbert: Is this beautiful?

Alfons glanced at the words he had written and gave a wry smile.

Alfons: ...Hardly. It's trash.

Elbert: I see...but I think I'll keep it.

Alfons: Why?

Elbert: ...Because it's a letter you gave me.

Alfons: Ha..., .............

He started to say something, but swallowed the words back into his throat...

(This is the first time I've seen Alfons so troubled by a response...)

Elbert: I'm glad you're alive.

Alfons: ...Haah.

A sigh escaped from his lips, which had been closed, troubled by how to respond.

Alfons: Did I lose another bet with you?

Elbert: ...It seems so.

Alfons: Honestly...you're just as much of a fool as Kate.

When Alfons went to his death, he only left something for Elbert.

(Whether it was out of guilt or a desire to leave some kind of trace, I don't know...)

But I know that Elbert is special to him, and I'm a little jealous.

As I took a step back and watched their exchange, I heard a stifled laugh from beside me.

Roger: Heh, heh... Your jealousy is showing, lil lady.

Kate: ...!

It's so embarrassing to be jealous of Elbert and have it pointed out to me.

(But, since it's out in the open... maybe I'll ask)

Kate: ...The reason Alfons is always with Elbert...

Kate: Alfons made it sound like it was for money, but... there must be more to it, right?

Roger: Who knows. I don't know his true intentions either.

Roger: I think I heard him say something like, "I couldn't drive him crazy when we first met."

("Couldn't drive him crazy"...)

If I translate Alfons' vocabulary, "drive him crazy" could be interpreted as "help him escape from the harsh reality."

In other words, he means he couldn't help Elbert when he was crushed by reality.

(Maybe he couldn't leave him alone and stayed with him)

(The truth behind that letter... might have been just what it said)

----"Have a lovely rest of your life."

(I don't know if it's irresponsible or caring)

But that's Alfons... and I really like him that way.

Elbert: Speaking of which... it's good that my blood type was a match.

Alfons: ...Your blood?

Elbert: Yeah. Roger gave you a transfusion... didn't you hear?

Alfons: ...

This is the second time today Alfons has fallen silent.

(I shouldn't say this, but... it's fun to see Alfons being thrown off balance)

Alfons: ...Roger? Can I talk to you for a minute?

Roger: Didn't I get your consent?

Alfons: That's strange, I don't remember.

Roger: Maybe because you were delirious from hemorrhagic shock?

Roger laughs with his arms crossed, and the temperature of the smile plastered on Alfons' face drops.

Alfons: You say the same thing when you take a drunk woman home and get blamed the next morning, you're the worst.

Roger: Don't lump me in with you.

Roger: If El's "greed" from sharing blood has transferred to you, it would be an interesting case study.

Roger: If the curse is blood-borne, and if you replace all the blood... well, what do you think would happen?

(Even if a blood transfusion was the best way to save him, you're really something, Roger. Always so dedicated to your research...)

Alfons: Would you please stop experimenting on people without their permission?

Roger: Sorry, but I can't do that. You owe me big time for saving your life.

Roger: I'll make sure you pay me back properly. With your body.

Alfons: Oh dear!

Alfons: Help me, Kate! This beast is going to suck me dry!

Kate: Give it up, Alfons. Because--

---CHOICES---

Roger saved your life.

I support Roger.

A debt is a debt.

----------------

Kate: I will continue to look for ways to escape your fate...

Kate: In fact, I support Roger.

Alfons: It's sad how I have no allies.

Elbert: ...Roger, ...go easy on him.

Roger: Yeah, I'll go easy.

Alfons: Thanks for the useless support, Elbert.

-

Alfons' life was no longer in danger, and we finally regained our peace.

As for the members of the Purification Club who came into contact with Alfons, William and the others captured all of them that day, extracted the necessary information, and then...executed them.

Naturally, they couldn't be released since they had seen the Crown's face.

There was no reason to let them go, as they had been orchestrating the massacre of innocent people, taking advantage of the lack of police or judicial intervention.

"Fight evil with evil" - that's what Crown is for.

-

---And a few days later, on the night Alfons was allowed to return to his normal life, the Crown was summoned again.

Jude: What, ya didn' die after all?

Alfons: Yes, I'm right here! Buy me a drink to celebrate my recovery.

Jude: Huh? Why should I buy ya a drink? Celebrate on yer own if ya want to.

Roger: Let's have a drink together for old time's sake, Jude. On your tab.

Liam: That sounds fun, I'm in!

Victor: Yes, yes, me too!

The lively table with everyone gathered together felt like it had been a while, and my face broke into a smile.

Harrison: Wouldn't it be faster to just have a drinking party at the castle?

Elbert: Al said that drinking outside the castle and drinking inside the castle have different effects on the amount of alcohol consumed...

Ellis: The effect of the amount of alcohol consumed...?

Kate: I think it means how good you feel relative to the amount you drink.

Looking around at the scene, William chuckled in the back of his throat.

William: Unfortunately, celebrating Alfons' recovery with Jude's money will have to wait a little longer.

Jude: I won't wait any longer.

Jude spat out briefly, and William opened his mouth again.

William: The other day, after Alfons risked his life to contact the enemy,

William: The Purification Club seems to have stopped attacking Crown for the time being.

William's bloodshot eyes narrowed, and Crown's expression changed.

William: It seems that Congressman Gore has realized that if they attack us, they will be the ones eliminated.

William: He is trying to sever ties with the Privy Council.

Alfons: As expected, he's cunning after years of serving as a congressman.

William: -But just because they've stopped targeting us doesn't mean their crimes are any less serious.

William: And the Privy Council isn't sentimental enough to protect a pawn that's no longer useful.

Victor: It's an opportunity, my dear cursed ones.

(The Crown... will judge the ringleaders of the Purification Club)

(The massacre in the slums... will finally end)

Alfons: As for the punishment of those in the Privy Council who obstructed justice,

Alfons: I'm sure you and William will take care of that, won't you, Victor?

Alfons: Then - can you let me judge Congressman Gore, the leader of the club?

.

.

.

.

.

.

Blind Love: Chapter 23

If you’d like to support my translations, feel free to buy me a coffee here! :)

[harleys1nhawaii]

LACRYMOSA

pairing: dabi / todoroki touya x gn!reader

warnings: angst, major character death, implied sexual intercourse

a/n: not proof read. pure angst and sadness. this song always created an atmosphere in my mind like this. i’m happy i got to write about it cuz i’m terrible at writing down my thoughts. i’m proud if y’all feel terrible<3

“grief is the price we pay for love.” said queen elizabeth. perhaps because of it’s uniqueness, you had never truly understood how it felt before. you couldn’t have guessed how much it would hurt, or how the world around you would fade away and leave you alone by yourself in the burden.

the sun is shining too bright. the birds aren’t chirping like they used to. even the stars are refusing to shine. grieving over the things you can’t repair. out on your own, cold and alone again. can this be what you really wanted, baby?

you couldn’t get your last night with him out of your head. shedding silent tears with your head on his chest, sinking into his embrace. you knew this was the unavoidable truth and couldn’t have prevented it. assuring yourself that this time wasn’t that time wasn’t something you could do forever. you couldn’t escape the truths of his wicked life, you couldn’t hold him back.

“will you come back?”

there you were, such a helpless fool. asking questions that you knew the answers of, hoping for a miracle to happen. praying to your gods as you curse at them at the same time. maybe if they weren’t so cruel, maybe if they were kind enough to bless him with a beautifully written fate, you wouldn’t have been begging your boyfriend to stay. to live.

he was silent as the blood made it’s way all the way through his cheek to the soft cotton case of the pillow. the bright moonlight shined into his cerulean eyes as he cracked a wicked smile to himself. this fresh wound that has opened deep inside of his heart had to be aching, but instead it was filled right up to the brim with a burning excitement.

he wasn’t going to lie, nor sugarcoat his words.

you dug yourself into him harder, pressing your face against the fabric of his tshirt, wet with your own tears.

you weren’t stupid. you knew what that meant. he wasn’t coming back. he’s no longer eating dinner you would make for two . he’s no longer watching stupid horror movies with you and then making out on the same couch for half the movie. when you go to bed at night, he won’t be there to hug you and fall asleep. after tonight, he wasn’t going to bed again.

after all those years of living a lowlife and waiting for the right time, he couldn’t go back and lose all the progress. he wasn’t going to die before he could kill his father. and since not dying has became a goal for the night of his day, he couldn’t turn down his this one only chance. “i can’t change who i am now, not this time. i won’t lie to keep you waiting for me. and in this short life,” he paused, exhaling a deep breath. “there’s no time to waste on giving up.”

“and you can blame it on me. set your guilt free, honey.” you squeeze your jaw to not let out a sob, gulping with the taste of his ashes.

“i don’t want to hold you back now, love. goodbye.”

that night you didn’t sleep. you wrapped your arms around him and tasted him on your tongue. his scent, his curves, his burns, his fresh pale skin. you memorized every little detail to keep him forever alive in your mind. you didn’t resist when he shifted from under you at pre sunrise. you didn’t move, you didn’t open your eyes. you knew you wouldn’t let him go if you saw how he pulled his clothes on and grabbed his coat from your hanger.

you shivered when you felt his mismatched lips press on your forehead, burning your skin.

“live a beautiful life, baby.” you heard him whisper into your neck. you kept your eyes closed, forcing your tears to hold in. you heard the front door open. you prayed to your gods to send down a miracle to make him change his mind and go prepare some breakfast instead. they didn’t.

you heard the door slam back when tears made their way rolling down on down your cheeks.

your love wasn’t enough.

[sonosvegliato]

To an Athlete Dying Young: Deleted Scenes Pt 2

Since Ao3 is down :(

Occurs after McCrispy incident of Part 1

Still unedited; feast on my under the couch cushion popcorn 

“All you did was make us look like fools,” Superboy mutters. His fists clench and unclench at his sides, like he can’t decide to be angry or resigned. It’s late; Tim’s still in the suit. He practices slipping in front of the heavy bag—he’s avoiding Bruce’s room tonight. Avoiding him will convince Bruce that there’s something Tim’s ashamed of. 

“When I left, what did Superman say to you?” he asks Superboy.

“That I’ll never measure up to him and I’ll be trapped in this prison block forever.”

Tim stops the bag and looks past it at Superboy.

“It was implied,” Superboy protests.

“I’m sure,” Tim says disbelievingly. “And how did he look at you?”

“The same way he always does. Like I’m a dead mouse his cat left on his doorstep.”

“You’ve got to be more specific,” Tim says. “At what angle were his eyebrows? Were his pupils dilated? How often did he blink?”

Superboy scowls.

“Did he look like he was trying to X-ray vision you?” Tim restates. “Because that’s not pity. That’s concern.” He points an expert finger at Superboy. “That’s your start.”

###

###

Bruce speaks little the next day. 

But there’s a wrinkle between his eyebrows that only shows up when he’s been studying a particularly elusive case file. It deepens when Tim speaks little, too.

###

###

“What are you doing?” Superboy asks.

“Finding solace in you.”

Superboy’s nose wrinkles in disgust, and he moves away from Tim. 

“No,” Tim hisses, pulling on his arm. “When Batman’s at the Hall, he and Martian Manhunter play chess in the rec room—” he points to the room down the corridor— “every day before dinner. They’re set to come by any minute now. Look concerned, think about me.”

Superboy scowls.

“You just look constipated,” Tim complains. “Just—” he hears footsteps rounding the corner, and quickly morphs his expression into one of panic. Superboy’s face twists in confusion, but it’s close enough. Tim’s still holding onto Superboy’s wrist.

“Robin,” Bruce says curtly, and Tim whirls like he’s surprised. He drops Superboy’s wrist and crosses his arms.

“Batman,” he greets, making sure to look higher than Bruce’s chin, and then replays You’ve disappointed me you’ve disappointed me you’ve disappointed me until when he breathes his chest shudders with the weight of it. 

Bruce walks past him into the recreation room. Martian Manhunter looks back at Tim before following him inside. 

###

###

Tim is retelling Wonder Woman when he got his suit when he catches Bruce in the corner of his eye and trails off. 

“Well,” he says, getting up and keeping his eyes trained on the table. “We’ll see how long I can keep it. I, uh. I just remembered I’m supposed to meet Superboy. We’re going to spar.”

He shoulders past Bruce. He walks all the way around the corner before doubling back. Bruce has disappeared, and the breakroom’s conversation is muffled and low. He edges closer until it’s just within his earshot.

“Why does your protege suddenly slink away from you like Odysseus hiding among the sheep?” Wonder Woman asks.

Bruce must sigh, because Wonder Woman’s next words are, “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” Bruce says, but the rest stumbles out like he’s been waiting for someone to ask. “He—and I—I don’t know.” Metal creaks as he must pull out a chair. “He…he avoids me. When there’s something wrong. Dick only avoided me towards the end, and Jason—” a long pause—“Jason never avoided me.”

“You cannot compare him to his predecessors,” Wonder Woman says severely. 

“You think I don’t know that?” Bruce replies sharply. 

Tim flattens himself against the wall, but Bruce’s voice turns muffled, like he’s talking to his hands. “I’m sorry.”

“I am not hurt,” Wonder Woman replies immediately. “Only concerned. And curious.”

“I’m terrified of him,” Bruce says. “And what I’m going to do to him.” 

“So this explains why you avoid him, too.”

“I don’t avoid him.”

“Letting him walk by you while he looks at you like you’re the pit into Tartarus is avoiding him,” Wonder Woman argues. “When did this start?”

“Four days ago. After he left without my permission. We had a discussion.”

Wonder Woman says nothing.

“It was a discussion,” Bruce presses. “He—he thinks he’s ready for the streets. I told him he’s not.”

“And that was it,” Wonder Woman says after a beat.

“And that was it,” Bruce affirms. 

“What were your exact words?”

“Diana.”

“I want the truth from you, Bruce.”

The chair creaks again, Tim hears the soft scrape of the weights in Bruce’s cape on the floor. “I said, ‘You’re not ready for the streets,’” he recalls tightly. “He said, ‘At least let me start shadowing you’. I said, ‘No, we’re not discussing this.’”

“Bruce.”

“I meant about shadowing me,” Bruce protests. “He revealed himself. The whole world knows he exists, now.”

“To the world, there’s always been a Robin,” Wonder Woman explains. “You’re the only one that knows the truth.”

“He disappointed me,” Bruce says.

“You have very high expectations; it’s not very hard to disappoint you. In fact, I’m sure he will disappoint you a hundred more times by the time he’s sixteen. And you’ll disappoint him two hundred times.”

“I know,” Bruce says softly.

“And he’ll still look up to you,” Wonder Woman continues. “He’ll still do his best for you. That’s love.”

  “He—”

“He loves you,” Wonder Woman says firmly. “Give him time to grow into his mistakes.”

“I can’t,” Bruce says. “He thinks I’m overbearing, but—I can’t bear the thought of something happening to him. I’d rather him hate me than be hurt because of me.”

Tim’s stomach flips.

“You’re so self-sacrificial,” Wonder Woman sighs. “Pandora’s box has already been opened, Bruce. There are countless evils in this world; you cannot hope to protect a boy from them all.” A pause, the clink of metal cuffs sliding across the table. “No matter how much you love him.”

It’s okay, Tim thinks frantically. It’s okay. There’s still time to fix this.

When he first clambered into the Batmobile’s passenger seat, in the stolen suit with his face stinging from a brick Two-Face threw at him, and Tim said, I’ll be your Robin and Bruce had grunted one of his we’ll see grunts, Tim never considered—he wants Bruce to like him, sure, of course.

He can’t let Bruce love him. 

That’s Jason’s place, not his. And if Tim is going to—if he’s ever going to get out of this imitation game, he’s got to prove he’s not Jason Todd. He’s got to figure out why Jason Todd is Hood. 

And he’s got to keep the Dark Knight in the dark.  

“He wants to be by your side,” Wonder Woman continues. “I think he only avoids you because he thinks you want to avoid him.”

“But—”

“You gave him the suit. Don’t stop him from the thing you’ve trained him for.”

“But I—”

“No butts,” Wonder Woman says, with a note of amusement. “They’re inappropriate for a table.”

Bruce grunts. A moment later he mumbles, “I don’t like his choice of friends.”

Wonder Woman laughs. “They’re around the same age, in theory. You didn’t expect your protégé to be entertained by us for this fortnight, did you?”

“This could have been avoided if I let him bring his Xbox,” Bruce says morosely. His voice raises. “What if I bought a gaming station for here? Xboxs. Playstations. Wii Sports Resort. We should put it in the recreation room.”

“You can’t prevent Robin from being friends with Superboy.”

“You don’t know what MarioKart is.” 

“Bruce.”

“Why him?” Bruce asks. “Tim is a good kid. He follows rules. Mostly. The clone is—is—a punk.”

“I think they make a surprising pair,” Wonder Woman admits. “But without surprises, you would never have penicillin or super glue or chocolate chip cookies.”

“I don’t want them to invent something together,” Bruce says darkly.

“That’s not up to you. But it does give me a good idea.” Wonder Woman’s voice lifts. “What if we partake in a friendly wager?”

“I don’t gamble,” Bruce says with distaste.

“Then it can be a statistical observation exercise, with risks,” Wonder Woman replies back. Without waiting for Bruce’s response, she explains, “I have instructed your protégé in proper battle technique. Why not put it to the test against me?”

“No,” Bruce says.

“Robin and Superboy both. If they make a good enough team, as I think they will, they’ll find a way to incapacitate me.”

“No,” Bruce repeats. “Diana—”

“Why not?” Wonder Woman continues firmly. “Because you do not trust Robin, or you do not trust his mind, or you do not trust his choice in allies?”

“That’s not—”

“He’ll surprise you,” Wonder Woman says.

Bruce releases a weary sigh.

“Yes,” he says finally. “I know he will.”

###

###

The plane is crashing again. Jeremy sits in the copilot seat, slumped and bleeding over the controls.

Tim yanks the yoke.

###

###

“Tim,” Bruce says, then coughs to cover his surprise. 

“Yeah, it’s me,” Tim says flatly. The door hisses closed behind him. He slumps at the bottom of Bruce’s bed, picks up a piece of chalk. 

“Goodnight,” Bruce says, softly. His arm shifts so it’s hanging off the bed. His knuckles brush the space besides Tim’s ear. 

“Goodnight,” Tim says, leaning away from him. He starts sketching a very wonky shielded S. He waits a very long time for Bruce’s breathing to even, then erases it and draws out a plan.

###

###

(Tim can do this).

###

###

“Tim,” Bruce says, just as Tim’s about to leave. Bruce’s floor is smeared softly white. Tim’s shirt is covered in dust. It’s all over his hands, his knees. He’d worn the stick of chalk to a fingernail’s width of a wedge.

Bruce gets out of his bed. He walks over to Tim. He reaches out to touch.

Tim jerks his chin. 

Bruce’s hand falls before it can find Tim’s skin. 

“You didn’t sleep well,” he says flatly.

“No,” Tim says, equally expressionless. “I did not.”

He presses his chalky fingers to the back of the door, steps out into the corridor. He leaves his hand on the side of the metal door before it can separate him and Bruce. 

“I am sorry,” he whispers. 

“Talk with me,” Bruce says. “I—your actions disappointed me, but I’m not disappointed in you. Sometimes I forget—that you’re only—and—”

“We’re partners,” Tim says.

Bruce sighs. “Yes. We’re partners. And I don’t like it when you hide from me.”

“Old habits die hard,” Tim replies. 

Bruce’s mouth turns up. Tim mimics it, then drops his hand from the door so it can slide back into place. When he hears the metal lock, the last swathe of air ghost the back of his neck. He walks stiff and purposefully back to his room. He can’t clip the cape at his shoulders. His fingers tremble. He curls them into his palms, the cape a pool of black around his feet, until the shaking stops. 

By then, he has convinced himself that the ache in his bones is sleeplessness, the smallness in his stomach is pre-breakfast hunger, that the knot in his throat is righteous fury. When he latches the cape at his neck, he is Robin and nothing else.

(But Tim is terrified for Bruce, and of what Tim will do to him.)

[leohttbriar]

Voyager “Deadlock” coda fic: Harry and B’Elanna talk

Time was not fixed or stable, warped as it was by its intimate relationship with everything else. Or maybe: it was fixed and stable, just fixed into an intimate relationship with things that shifted under time’s skin. Its information radiated out of all things that changed it beyond recognition and—Harry was its fool? Or its waste? Or however the quote went. He liked Shakespeare—but he also didn’t. 

Tom had left Harry to his strange mood at breakfast, running off to his shift so he would arrive at a perfectly timed 15-minutes early. To annoy Chakotay, he had said with a grin. To prove my point. 

I’m not sure there is anything else you need to prove, Tom, Harry had felt the need to press. 

Yes, well, and then he had darted off. 

Yes, well, Harry had said to himself, picking at his breakfast, now in a mostly empty room.

Something he understood about Tom—something he felt in Tom he had no desire yet to admit to having within himself—was that unbearable certainty that no one was telling the truth. Not to him. Ironic, for Tom, when he’d been having a lot of fun misleading the whole ship weeks ago. For Harry, this was not disproven. 

The table at which he sat was facing the observation windows—Voyager was back at top-speed heading home. Or it was standing still. Matter of perspective? He shook his head. 

“You going to finish that?” B’Elanna asked, dropping in front of the stars and grabbing his mug of coffee. 

“Please,” he said, gesturing for her to take it, but she had already started drinking. 

He watched her face—the way she wasn’t watching him as she chugged the coffee and set it down and put her chin her hand and looked down at the table-top.

“So,” she said, not looking at him. “How are you holding up?”

“Good,” he replied. “How are you, B’Elanna?”

She just nodded. 

Harry turned away from the troubled line on her left cheek, her nose scrunching up in a way he’s certain she didn’t want it to, and looked back out the window, beyond her shoulder. He didn’t want to be lied to. 

“I’m not sure I am where I am, B’Elanna,” he heard himself say. Then he gripped the table edge, hard, and added with a cringe, “Sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—“

“Like you feel as if you’re having delusions or you’re having trouble rationalizing the very real spacetime paradox we all lived through?” B’Elanna asked, leaning back in her chair, crossing her arms, still not looking at him but responding honestly. 

Harry took in a quick breath and said, “The second one I think.”

B’Elanna nodded again. “Yeah,” she said, moving her jaw silently. “Only you didn’t live through it—must be especially strange for you.”

Harry tried to trace her logic and failed. “That wasn’t me. I don’t remember it.” 

B’Elanna nodded. Again. 

“Everyone I know died.” 

“Well, I don’t remember that,” she said.

Harry frowned at her. “You’re mad I’m not him.”

She looked at him. She rolled her eyes. “That’s not how this works, Starfleet. You are him. This isn’t some philosophical riddle. You aren’t a ship being rebuilt. What things qualify Harry Kim, hmm? Particles? Memories?”

“Clearly I don’t have all his memories because I don’t remember dying.”

“So you think if you forget something about your life now you’ve fundamentally changed? What did you have for breakfast a week ago?”

“Breakfast and dying aren’t equivalent.”

She dropped forward, hands on the table. “Aren’t they, though?”

“No, they’re not, B’Elanna.” He folded his arms. “The things you feel you have to know aren’t always true, you know?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I just mean you’re so…” he watched her mouth twitch. “It’s okay to be affected. By terrible things. You don’t have to minimize this.”

“Well you don’t have to fix it,” she snapped. 

“No, that’s your job.” 

“I know what you’re trying to do, Harry, and it’s ridiculous. You’re real. That’s it. Why are you letting yourself being unsettled? What do you want this to confirm for you?”

Harry bit at the inside of his cheek. He glanced meekly at the replicated breakfast on his plate—he used one of his replicator credits for it, thinking it might help him to feel less unnerved. 

“I’m not sure I was built for strange,” he said. 

“Cryptic.”

“Captain Janeway said that’s what being in Starfleet is: strange experiences.”

“She’s right.”

“Well, maybe I’m not fit for it.”

“And yet here you are.” 

He pushed back his food and stood up rapidly from his seat, hands dragging down his face in frustration. 

“It feels like she replicated me,” he confessed. “She replicated me and that baby. She just willed it. Punched in the code. Got us here—existing.” 

B’Elanna stood as well and then sat on top of the table, legs swinging innocently, face turned to the ground. 

“Harry,” she said, sounding grim. “Can you live with it?”

“What?” he sounded shrill. 

“There’s another Harry, drifting in space, possibly frozen and possibly going to remain that way until the heat death of the universe. I let you go. Yet here you are. Can you live with it?”

Harry put his hands on his hips, glanced at the stars, thought about how long one can survive in the vacuum, how short. “Obviously.”

“Then what do you need?” 

“I’m just trying to make sense—“

“No,” she said. And Harry saw tears in her eyes. “You’re not. The logic is already there, Harry. You can’t rationalize this any more than what’s there. It’s real and true. You weren’t replicated. You are exactly as you were. You feel strange about it because it’s strange. Because you walked through a rift in the continuum. Yet here you are. What do you need?”

“What I always need,” he said, pathetically, throat hardening like a salt on the shore, chest filling with short and inadequate breaths. “Someone to say it’s okay.”

B’Elanna, pink-faced and teary-eyed, smiled like a thorny rose and said, “It’s okay.” 

Harry couldn’t help it. He stepped forward and pulled her into his chest, wrapping an arm around her shaking shoulders, and pressing his own stinging shut eyes into her hair. Her hands lifted to lay across his back and he held. 

“I’m sorry for dying on you,” he said. 

“It’s okay,” she mumbled into his shirt. “You’re still here.”

“It’s strange.”

“It’s okay,” she said again.

[candyredmusings]

Drag Race Quotes That I Think About Constantly

Random assortment of things said in RPDR 

“Whores get paid ... I was a slut.”

“Your tone seems very pointed right now.”

“Oh y’all wanted a twist, eh? Let’s get SICKENING!”

“I WAS HIT BY A FUCKING CAR!”

“Tiny tops ... They crack me up! It’s like watching a four year old try to push a couch on their own.”

“IT DOESN’T GET BETTER. IT GETS WORSE.”

“You don’t have any talent.”

“You should not be here.”

“Let me ask you a very fair question. What do you do successfully?”

“Girl you’re a JOKE.”

“And I’m about to punch somebody in the face.”

“There’s ALWAYS time for a cocktail!”

“IT WAS RIGOR MORRIS GIRL!”

“LOOK OVER THERE!”

“I don’t have a sugar daddy. I never had a sugar daddy. If I wanted a sugar daddy, yes, I could go out and get one because I am WHAT? SICKENING! You could NEVER have a sugar daddy because you are not that kind of girl -- Baby everything I’ve had I’ve worked for and gotten myself I built myself from the ground up BITCH--”

“I don’t have a sugar daddy.”

“Baby everything I’ve had I’ve worked for and gotten myself I built myself from the ground up BITCH!”

“About five minutes ago, I looked over at [NAME] and realized they were ugly. And I’m at peace with that.”

“I didn’t mind I was just happy for the air time.”

“AAH! HAAA! I’m acting.”

“What the fuck is going on here on this day?”

“Jesus christ, white people scare me.”

“WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING BITCH?”

“That’s a question.”

“I’m serving you an adequate dress made of materials that is on my body.”

“We all make choices ... But that was a choice.”

“Her catchphrase is ‘you’re not my real dad and you never will be.’”

“If you hate it fake it make it into something less vile.”

“The planet’s dying - thoughts and prayers.”

“I’ve had it with you go the fuck home! I’ve had it, OFFICIALLY!”

“You wanted crazy? Well you got it now.”

“It was in all the magazines at the time.”

“JESUS CHRIST, the stress is just really getting to me.”

[NAME] YOU CAN FUCK ME IN THE ASS!”

“These are my summer diamonds ... Some are diamonds, some are not.”

“Not today, Satan. Not today.”

“I FEEL VERY ATTACKED!”

“Okay, public school, calm down.”

“[NAME]’s penis was so big, when I was doing a line of coke off of it I had to stop midway to catch my breath.”

“I feel sexy in anything, even a bodybag.”

“I tend to think that emotions are for ugly people.”

“You are so full of shit, the toilet’s jealous.”

“Act a fool girl. Act a fool.”

“She looks like Nancy Regan doing a magic show”

“Let me explain to you what a bitch is: Being In Total Control of Herself“

"You'll never be glamour."

“I'm pretty impressed... but not that impressed“

“Your outside is GORGEOUS, but your insides are dark and nasty. And I don’t like you.”

“Your outside is GORGEOUS, but your insides are dark and nasty.”

“You don’t love me.”

“HA! GET HER [NAME]!”

“SIT YOUR ASS DOWN AND SHUT THE HELL UP BITCH!”

“Did you or did you not come for me today?”

“I’ve had it. You know what I’ve had? It.”

“The level of unprofessionalism ... FAR too much.”

“Y’all told her on the internet it was funny. I blame y’all.”

“No you’re done and I’m gonna tell you why you’re done.”

“I don’t know what I think about that girl ...”

“What you wanna do isn’t exactly what you’re gonna do.”

“I’m a fucking legend! Bring me a Dr. Pepper and another lover, shit!”

“I love the way you think, but that didn’t make any god damn sense.”

“Quite the scandal actually. With my cousin-in-law, really. It was in all the magazines at the time.”

“She bonked so many boys down at the boogie down bronx they named a free clinic after her.”

“You know, I’m still a petty bitch, so from that day forward I said I would never utter the name, [NAME], again.”

“I may be old, baby, but I’m WISE.”

“She’s everything I wanna be when I’m 57.”

“I would CLIMB HIM LIKE A TREE -- I would need a ladder.”

[prince-aegon-targaryen]

A sneak peek for the final chapter of The Fool and the Dragon - and a long sneak peek too (for me anyway) since the last update was almost a year ago and I feel bad

Aegon let out a loud, tired breath. “I have a joke for you.” He said, with little energy. Now that Faune was paying more attention, she could see that Aegon looked just as emotionally drained as herself. “Now I don’t have your gift for story-telling so forgive me if I miss the mark here.” He continued, sitting up straighter as he began.

“On the way through Roseroad, a dying traveler stopped by an inn. Inside the inn resided every woman he had ever loved. His mother was in the first room, his sister in the second, his wife in the third, and his daughter in the fourth. Whose room would you like to spend your last night in? Asked the innkeeper. Would you choose to spend that time with your mother? The woman who made you the man you are?”

Faune found herself listening, a surprise to even herself. She lowered her pear and looked at Aegon’s face as he continued the joke.

“No -no - I am a babe no longer, said the traveler.” Aegon waved his hand slightly, acting out the dying traveler’s words - before he switched back to the innkeeper’s voice. “Ah! Then the sister! The woman who shaped your childhood! The loved one who invented all the games you played!”

Aegon's eyes were on the floor as he spoke, a weak, tired smile on his face. “But once again, the traveler said, No not her. I am not a child either anymore. I am a man now.”

“Oh of course! Then your wife! The woman who shared your bed and shaped your adult years! That is who you will spend your last day with!” With another bite to the pear, Faune continued to listen, genuinely surprised that she hadn't heard the joke before. “But the traveler spoke again with the same calm indifference as the previous options. Not her either. I have spent enough time with her in these past years. That time has passed.”

“The innkeeper smiled and nodded. A father's heart you have. I will show you the room to see your daughter as you depart from this life.”

Aegon looked back at Faune then, who was mid-chewing the pear. She typically would be self-conscious of her appearance since she hadn’t readied herself for the day as she normally would have. Without Aemond, however, she doubted anything would be normal again.

“But the traveler stopped him. She is a grown woman with her own family now. The innkeeper was stunned. He stared at the dying traveler, perplexed. Then who do you wish to be with during your final moments?”

Faune gave all of her attention to the King, wanting to know the solution to the tale. Aegon’s smile widened. “And finally the traveler said his answer. Your own mother, sister, wife, and daughter shall do nicely. Send them to my bed, and I’ll die a happy man.”

With a loud disappointed groan, Faune turned away from him. “I was expecting something beautiful and thoughtful.”

“It’s a joke, not a poem.”

[fridaythe13ththeseries]

Reflecting - Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Five

“Your weapon may stop one or two of us,” Jack said, looking directly at Carlos. “but you can’t get all of us before we get to you.”

Carlos shook his head. “Don’t need to. See, my guys came to their senses out there, after your little show with the exploding car.” He nodded his head in Johnny’s direction. “They have orders to storm on up here, guns afire, if I shoot off this shotgun one more time. You all don’t want that to happen, I’m sure.”

“Okay then,” Micki began, stepping in front of Jack. “Why do you want to sacrifice yourself in order to help us? What’s in it for you?”

Carlos staggered a bit, but kept the shotgun raised. “What’s in it for me is making good before I take my last breath. I realized something out there. Had one of those, what’d ya call them, epiphanies? Raphael ran on in here, his tail between his legs, with no looking back. Finally all hit me, you know?”

Vincent stepped forward, standing before all them, venturing closer to Carlos and his weapon than good sense should allow.

“I recall you, your face. You worked for Gabriel.” Vincent asked the bald man.

Carlos nodded. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. I was his errand boy, the man he went to when he didn’t want to get his own hands dirty. Once he was through with me, I moved on to working for his brother, Raphael.” He looked down at his former employer, dead on the floor. “I did horrible things for him, too, all in the name of loyalty. I was a fool.”

“Catherine?” Vincent asked, guessing this man had a hand in her becoming trapped in the mirror.

“Yes, I helped him with all that, getting the mirror there, working the spell or curse or whatever it was that pulled her inside.“ Carlos answered. Blood had begun seeping out of the makeshift bandage he had wrapped around his destroyed arm. “And then there were all the deaths. Once a month, another death. All to keep her alive in there, like some toy.” He sighed and tried to steady himself. “Like I said, I have a lot to atone for.”

With pity in his eyes, Vincent looked down at the man. “I still cannot ask such a thing of you. It is too much.”

Shaking his head, Carlos said, “No, it isn’t too much. Not for a dying man. One way or another, I am checking out. Let me do it with some dignity, at least. Let me make up for some of the unspeakable acts I’ve been a part of. Let me make things right with you.” He looked from Vincent to Catherine. “And with her. Please.”

Vincent was about to protest further when a hand reached up and grasped his arm. “Let him do this.” Jack said in a low voice, his eyes on Carlos. “Sometimes, a man’s final act can help him make peace with the mistakes of his life.”

Looking down at Jack, then back at Carlos, Vincent nodded once.

“Thank you.” Carlos said, lowering the shotgun finally. “And, for what it’s worth, I am sorry.”

Vincent considered this, then turned away, his attention back on Catherine.

“Okay, so what do I need to do?” Carlos asked, looking at Jack. “And mind you, you might need to make it snappy. Room keeps spinning on me here.”

Jack gestured to Ryan and Johnny to help Carlos into Casares’ bedroom. They both hurried forward, handing off his shotgun to Micki as they carried him to the bed, blood from his arm marking their path.

With Carlos on the bed, Rashid asked Vincent to bring the mirror back into the bedroom. Where it had taken both Ryan and Jack to bring it out into the hallway, it took only Vincent to lift and carry it back into the room. He placed it where Rashid indicated, next to the bed and Carlos.

“Right, now Johnny, can you please get me that mirror over the dresser?” Rashid said, indicating the smaller mirror on the wall across the room. Johnny obeyed, bringing it over and laying it on the bed next to the bleeding man.

Rashid reached into his white jacket and pulled out a small, leather book. He opened it to the dry, brittle pages he had bookmarked. “Can she hear me?” Rashid asked, looking at Jack.

Jack shook his head. “I have been communicating with her by writing on paper and holding it for her to read.”

“Very good.” Rashid smiled. “Bring me the paper.” On the pad Jack had used, he wrote down instructions for Catherine, then held them up for her to read.

Once she had finished and indicated her understanding, Rashid turned his attention to Carlos, whose eyes kept opening and closing. He explained the part of the spell the man needed to understand. “Does this all make sense to you?”

Carlos nodded, then coughed. “Let’s get on with it, alright?”

Rashid began reading from his book, saying words and making motions with his hands that seemed bizarre to the younger group, but which held Jack in rapt attention. After a few minutes, Rashid looked around. “I need someone very strong to hold on to this man’s hand, to be an anchor in this reality.”

Vincent stepped around the bed and held his furry hand out to the dying man. Carlos looked at it, then slowly lifted his good arm. Vincent grasped his hand tightly. “Ready.” he said to Rashid.

Rashid nodded and continued his incantation, his gesturing. He leaned over Carlos and lifted the man’s wounded arm. A yelp of pain was the response from the bald man, but he didn’t fight it. Rashid placed the bloody hand down on the smaller mirror. He continued, his words becoming a chant, repeated over and over.

The small mirror began to shimmer. Jack and the others peered into the it’s glass and saw the form of Carlos slowly taking shape on the other side, laying on the bed as he did here. Rashid looked up at the mirror Catherine was trapped in and said, “Very good. Vincent, hold tight.”

Vincent did as he was told, watching Catherine on her side of the glass. She smiled at him, nervous at what was going on before her. Suddenly she turned in her room. A form was taking shape on her bed. The same form that was in the smaller mirror, that was in the real bedroom with the rest of them.

Carlos lay on her bed, his dark clothes all white now, matching everything else in the room Catherine had spent more than a year in. His arm appeared fine here, but in the real room, it still bled profusely. His good arm was held aloft, apparently grasping Vincent’s, although Vincent’s hand didn’t appear in Catherine’s room.

Rashid looked at her now, nodding.

Catherine understood. She was to follow through with the instructions Rashid had given her earlier. She moved around her bed, and stretched her hand out where Carlos held his up. She put her hand under his, attempting to switch hands with Carlos in Vincent’s grasp.

At first, she felt foolish, feeling for an invisible hand. But she quickly amended that feeling when the soft, warm touch of Vincent came into contact with her skin. Carlos’ hand slipped away and Vincent quickly grasped Catherine’s hand in it’s place.

Carlos let his arm drop down by his side, moaning with the pain that shot through him. The pain was brief however, as his body in the real bedroom vanished almost instantly.

Jack looked in the smaller mirror, but didn’t see Carlos reflected there, either. He was only in the antique mirror, laying unharmed in white clothes, on Catherine’s bed. Yet Catherine was still there, sitting on the edge of the bed, her hand held up grasping an invisible man.

Rashid’s chanting changed once again, to more singular words, his hands waving over the smaller mirror. He looked up at Vincent and shouted, “Now, please, pull her out or we will lose her, as well.”

Vincent needed no second command. He put all his strength into his grip on Catherine and proceeded to pull her forward.

“It’s working!” Micki yelled, looking at the antique mirror. Catherine’s form slowly faded away from their view. Carlos was now alone.

Jack watched Catherine briefly appear in the smaller mirror before she vanished from there, as well.

“Whoa.” Johnny said, backing up from the bed a bit.

Catherine had come into view on the bloodstained blanket, her hand no longer holding something invisible, but now in the secure grasp of Vincent, standing before her. She leapt to her feet and into his arms, embracing the man she thought she would never see or hold again. Vincent reciprocated, practically enveloping Catherine in his arms.

Rashid sat down on the bed, his spell at an end. He took off his fez hat and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his coat. Jack put his hand on his old friend’s shoulder.

“Well done, my friend. Well done indeed.” Jack said, smiling at the sight of Catherine and Vincent together, at last.

Vincent and Catherine finally separated, and Catherine stepped over to Jack and Rashid, hugging them each in turn, thanking them profusely for their help.

Vincent walked over to the mirror, where Carlos still lay on the bed. The white sleeve covering his arm had begun to darken, the red hue of his blood the only color in the room. “Why does he bleed? I don’t understand, if it had helped Catherine why does it not help him?”

Rashid and Jack stood up and walked to the mirror. Ryan, Micki and Johnny were close by, listening. Jack was the one who answered Vincent’s question.

“It is the curse. The mirror is one of many items that have been cursed, items we track down. And I’m afraid the curse on each item demands payment, usually in the form of a death, a murder. For Carlos to heal, a death would need to be committed in the name of the antique. And, as was with Catherine, this particular curse demanded a death on each full moon to keep him alive.”

Rashid looked at Carlos, in the mirror. The man was laying on the bed, looking back at them. He was smiling.

“I think he knew what his sacrifice entailed. It was the price he was willing to pay.” Rashid said, smiling back at the man in the mirror.

“Well,” Ryan said, looking at the group about the room. “I think it’s time we got the heck out of here and back to the shop. Okay?”

Micki smiled, running her hand through her long, red hair. “Best idea I have heard all day.”

Vincent was about to protest, uncomfortable with so many strangers, but Catherine’s hand on his arm stopped him. “We would be happy to.” she said. “Thank you.”

Ryan and Johnny explained their need for taking the mirror back with them, and Vincent easily lifted it up. Micki and Ryan gathered up all of Jack’s books, as well as their ever-important manifest.

The group left the room, taking Carlos’ shotgun with them, just in case. They made their way down the servants stairs, and out the back way of the mansion. They crossed the grounds without encountering the guards Carlos mentioned. Their hike through the woods was mostly quiet, each of them reflecting on the recent events in their own way.

Breaking into two groups, one in the Mercedes with the mirror and one in Rashid’s small car, they drove through the early evening back to ‘Curious Goods’

[magnetar1]

Bright Desolation

They did not see where I went on the day I left them.  They howled inside their desiccated skulls as they stood proud.  They waited for the stars to change hoping they’d regain the sight they lost.  

I took them to be beggars in the end.  War manipulated their fears and crushed their memories.  They could no longer see beyond the burning fields as their spirits were feasted on by black legends and force-fed the treacle of wasted years.

Still, I moved past it like a fish slicing through the water.  Slashing their minds and cutting out their hearts, suffocating them where they slept so they wouldn’t have to wake up again.  I took pity on them in the end which only a fool can trust, begrudging them the sacrifice of their own peril.

Instead, extracting the essence of what they gave me: egg, bile, chance, transmissive host, aligning through fluidic means, yet never fully coalescing.  Traveler or ghost over gray, lonely roads, only not so lonely to me.  Enraptured by the filamental guise shuddering between grief and isolation never too far from the obliqueness of space.

I change, and go, how I must.  Metamorphosis of a star is the dark art of annhilation, either considered a blessing or a curse among nature’s rabble.  Whether letting in the martyrdom of an age or trailing mysteries to their scintillating edge.  

Where the Black Sun radiates with disorder and reunion.  I don’t remember dying, yet wander through realms of the dead.  Out of the smoking abyss to one cavernous retreat under the mountains.  Gold of the world dims, blinding any who stay behind.  Haunted evidence in their vacant eyes as they’ve lost far more than their sight.  

In a ritual of separation and departure.  The likelihood of entering another domain without making it back as those who came far and have died many times due to sorcery, plague or war can attest.  Chameleons in the darkness.  Black Sun portends to them rival worlds and other vistas of infinitude.

***

I float away until I’m nowhere.  Like the Taar I once smoked in reeking dens I am orbiting down.  

Weightless companion to my heavy burden as the universe reminds me: that somewhere, out there, lies its center and wherever I go I’ll be reminded of you.

Returning, instead, to a budding, chaotic world, where sands have not yet set and winter never comes.  Cascading fields of green untrampled by human feet.  Unsullied tide of spring-water seen clear through to the Serpent’s Eye.  

Looking back.  

I feel its heart in mine, cold at the bottom of a lake.  A vision within a vision ensconced by phantom sediment.  Proof of my existence.  Ardor in the face of blight and confusion.  

However, surviving aeons, its footprint remains.  World swims around its form with radiant devotion.  Substanceless depths come up for air as I watch myself drown.  No matter, I was born here, where flesh meets sky.  

I am just a man, I realize, crawling toward the Idol.  I am my own frozen shadow under a dead moon.  

The Idol is silent, too, and has been for some time.  And even while the war is long over we’re afraid to go outside.  Still, if I am a traveler – a true, wayfaring outlander cordially self-exiled – I’ll need to move past this, too.  If only to hear that voice again, guttural, announcing itself with brute alienage.

***

I can give you that much at least: that I’ve lived like some pagan savage.  I’ve fornicated with witches and bled for necromancers before locking myself away.  

Or is it one of the many nightmares I’m only now awakening from?  

Eyes, once tearful, brimming with devotion, now arid as the Desert of Glass, penetrating with sharp onism, clarity, no longer afraid to let go.  Supine before splintering futures as a necromancer, clad in hoary robes, scried my heart for telling palpitations.  While ages dwindled ahead to points of corrugating light, sun spilling its seed above the constricting meridian with no more room to breathe.  

A demon, I was, spared to live truly, irrevocably, dead.  And yet, alive, fuming with boreal consciousness while experiencing the tension of the world itself as a lashing scourge of fire and judgment . . .

Twisting, writhing through charnel streets as the blackness of my thoughts reveled in the clamor of doom.  Resurrected to witness the night of nights when you are finally put out of your misery as, under these collapsed ruins and toppled halls, nothing remains.

Like the distance I feel which fills you with dread by the end.  Another relic for the march across dead seas.  Banners held high in defiance of madness to come: that you’ll go nowhere in the end, rotting on your throne.

Voice loud and clear, even over the clamor of war.  Churlish words of a demon’s curse enraptured by the destruction.

***

I became lost on the solitary road.  Deeper into the mountains.  I’d been cold before, but never like this.  Sky like an ashen cowl rendering me invisible against the expanse of glaring, white drifts.

I am reminded of another life.  

People of the Black Sun.  

Gaunt denizens, flesh worn only to still the waters of the thing inside, warming their bones inside a spectral furnace as they come to terms with the ghost inside.  Situating musculature over stone as they are transformed into worms and ghouls who haunt, yet are never haunted, in void-like realms, considered revenant when spied from afar.  

All that mattered was they were waiting for me.

What do you know, or care to know, as you fade from view?  As this feeling remains, which is no feeling at all? . . .

World itself decays, gathering flies of its own.  Festering reunions in the depths of holocaustal memories.  Behind a veil of indifference, rising and falling of flame, blatant futures spew from exhausted oracles.  Pineal eye slams shut to the Fall and deprecation of valor.    

It’s okay, a Voice assured me, to end it like this.  It was their voice, our voice, echoing through the illimitable chamber where we congregated: where the demonic wailing of the world could no longer be heard.  

[limpfisted]

SELECT SONGS/LYRICS FROM MY WYLL PLAYLIST.

Dancing Queen Piano Version.

The Man of Metropolis Stole Our Hearts. / ONLY A STEEL MAN CAN BE A LOVER. IF HE HAD HANDS TO TREMBLE ALL OVER. WE CELEBRATE PUR SENSE OF EACH OTHER. WE HAVE A LOT TO GIVE ONE ANOTHER.

I’m Always Chasing Rainbows. / I’M ALWAYS CHASING RAINBOWS, WATCHING THE CLOUDS DRIFT BY. MY DREAMS ARE LIKE ALL MY SCHEMES, ENDING IN THE SKY.

You First. / THOUGHT I’D SIMMER DOWN AS I GOT OLDER. CAN’T SHAKE THE DEVIL SITTING ON MY SHOULDER. WHO INVITED YOU? JUST LIKE A STRAY ANIMAL, I KEEP FEEDING SCRAPS. I GIVE IT MY ENERGY, AND IT KEEPS COMING BACK.

Working For The Knife. / I ALWAYS THOUGHT THE CHOICE WAS MINE, AND I WAS RIGHT, BUT I JUST CHOSE WRONG. I START THE SAY LYING AND END WITH THE TRUTH, THAT I’M DYING FOR THE KNIFE.

Monster. / I’M ONLY A MAN WITH A CANDLE TO GUIDE ME. I’M TAKING A STAND TO ESCAPE WHAT’S INSIDE ME. CAN I CLEAR MY CONSCIENCE IF I’M DIFFERENT FROM THE REST? DO I HAVE TO RUN AND HIDE? I NEVER SAID I WANTED THIS. THIS BURDEN CAME TO ME. AND IT MADE ITS HOME INSIDE.

Dance The Night Away. / WHEN MY HEART;BREAKS (they never see it, never see it.) WHEN MY WORLD SHAKES,p (i feel alive, i feel alive.) I DON’T PLAU IT SAFE. SON’T YOU KNOW ABOUR ME? I COULD DANCE, I COULD DANCE, I COULD DANCE, EVEN WHEN THE TEARS ARE FLOWING, LIKE DIAMONDS ON MY FACE.

Satan Loves You. / I SPEND MY SUMMERS WITH THE HAMMERHEAD SHARKS. CIRCLING SAILORS IN THE EVENING LIGHT. YEAH THEY TASTE REAL GOOD WHEN THEY HAVEN’T BEEN LAID SINCE LAST APRIL. WE’RE ALWAYS NECK-AND-NECK BUT NEVER FACE-TO-FACE, I PRAY TO LUCIFER TO LET ME FALL FROM GRACE. I’.PM AN ANTI-HERO. DOESN’T THAT COUNT AS FAITH?

Hater’s Anthem. / I LOVE THE WAY IT FEELS TO BE A HATER.SOMETHING SO SWEET ABOUT THINKING THAT I’M BETTER, JUST TO WAKE UP IN BED AND NEVER REALLY EVER RISE TO THE OCCASSION OR EVEN HOLD UP UNDER PRESSURE.

Running up that Hill (A Deal With God.) / IF I ONLY COULD, I’D MAKE A DEAL WITH GOD, AND GET HIM TO SWAP OUR PLACES. IS THERE SO MUCH HATE FOR THE ONES WHO LOVE US? TELL ME, WE BOTH MATTER, DON’T WE?

Dancing on Glass. / SCIENCE AND REASON WILL TELL US SO. THE BLOOD IN OUR VEINS ARE JUST CHEMICALS. YOU BETTER BELIEVE I KEEP MY DEMONS TO MYSELF. YOU’D BETTER BELIEVE IT’S GETTING HARDER. BUT I’M NEVER GONNA STOP UNTIL IT’S BROKEN. HOW LONG TIL WE LEARN DANCING IS DANGEROUS? HOW LONG TIL WE FIND THE DEVIL INSIDE US? HOW HIGH IS TOO LOW?

Miracles. / ASK ME NO QUESTIONS, I WILL TELL YOU NO LIES. I’M NOT ASKING FOR A MIRACLE. WE’RE LOOKING FOR ANGELS IN THE DARKEST OF SKIES. IF YOU FEEL IT, COULD YOU LET ME KNOW?

Myth. / IF YOU BUILT YOURSELF A MYTH, YOU’D KNOW JUST WHAT TO GIVE. MATERIALIZE, OR LET THE ASHES FLY. HELP ME TO NAME IT. HELP ME TO NAME IT..

Slow Disco. / THERE’S BLOOD IN MY EARS, AND A FOOL IN THE MIRROR. AND THE BAY OF MISTAKES COULDN’T GET ANY CLEARER, AM I THINKING WHAT EVERYBODY’S THINKING? I’M SO GLAD I CAME BUT I CAN’T WAIT TO LEAVE. SLIP MY HAND FROM YOUR HAND, LEAVE YOU DANCING WITH A GHOST.

SHAKE IT OUT.

I Like Giants. / AND THE OCEAN IS A GIANT THAT CAN SWALLOW ME WHOLE. SO I SWIM FOR ALL SALVATION AND I SWIM TO SAVE MY SIUL. BUT MY SOUL IS JUST A WHISPER INSIDE A GIANT’S EYE, SO I FLIP TO MY BACK AND I FLOAT AND I SING. I AM GROUNDED, I AM HUMBLED, I AM ONE WITH EVERYTHING.

SHAKE IT OUT. (you are a chorus of drunken, hungover, very tired angels.)

I WANT TO DANCE WITH SOMEBODY. / CLOCK STRIKES UPON THE HOUR, AND THE SUN BEGINS TO FADE, STILL ENOUGH TIME TO FIGURE OUT… HOW TO CHASE MY BLUES AWAY. AND WHEN THE NIGHT FALLS, MY LONELINESS CALLS. OOH, I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY, I WANNA FEEL THE HEAT WITH SOMEBODY. YEAH, I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY.

yeah, with somebody who loves me.

[pandemoniumskey]

Songbird p.3 - Andy Biersack x OC

The Masterlist

Hio Everyone,

So upon writing these, this is as far as I got in my original writing. This chapter isn’t even finished yet and I have no idea where I am going from here. If you’ve got any ideas for where this should go, let me know and I will test it to see if it works. If it does, at the end of the chapter I will give you credit. 

Love you all, 

Pandemonium

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Three: Be Mine?

It was a quiet day as Andy and Max sat in her car. He was leaving to go back on tour tomorrow and secretly Max was devastated. She loved the time she had been spending with him. It was not often she got to spend time with anyone, they were often busy or did not enjoy what she loved doing, so she often felt lonely. 

Over the past two weeks, the two had grown really close. She felt like she had known Andy for a long time - like forever. She had never felt anything close to that with anyone except for Tessa, and a friend she could no longer see anymore. 

They were going to go out for dinner after watching a movie at her apartment. (The two were having a Batman marathon, which was an obvious choice. Both loved the movie series, they just had differing opinions of which movie was the best.) She was just waiting for Andy to pick the restaurant. Problem was, Andy was being so God damn indecisive. 

Finally, Andy put his phone down and said, “Montana’s? I’m in the mood for ribs and they have an all-you-can-eat rib special going on right now.” 

She nodded, “sounds good to me. It’s close by too.” She started the car and drove the short distance to the restaurant. Andy laughed when he realized it was literally a 5 minutes drive from the apartment complex.

She remembered the first time she brought Andy to her apartment and he saw all the band posters pinned on her bedroom wall. 

He smirked when he noticed the majority of them were Black Veil Brides. “So you’re just a casual fan huh?”

Max blushed and hid her face. “It looks like we’ve had a big impact on you.”

“You have no idea,” she mumbled hoping he didn’t hear, but apparently he did when a frown slid onto his face. She was thankful he didn’t call her on it. That was a conversation for another day. 

Listening to BVB always helped calm her down when she was stressed or angry. It only took half a song and she felt much better. She knew she would tell Andy eventually. She felt that special connection with him that she had never felt with previous men, or anyone to be exact. 

She got out of the car and he followed quickly behind her. He seemed more excited about the food then she was. He didn’t know she could probably eat him under the table when it came to ribs. They were just too good not to devour. 

She hoped this didn’t scare him off. Her feelings were growing fast for the rockstar. She felt hopeless at the feelings bubbling inside her, dying to make her look like a fool. 

The hostess in a blue plaid shirt and tight jeans came over and brought them to their table. Andy pulled the chair away from the table and pushed it in once she sat down. 

Another person came over to them in the standard uniform. “You’re from that band, right? Black Veil… uh… Black Veil Brides?”

Andy nodded with a bright smile on his face. “That I am.”

“My daughter listens to your music. I haven’t seen her so happy before she discovered it.” This made Max smile, Andy must never get old of hearing how much his music has helped people. 

“I’m glad I could help, would you like me to sign something for her?”

The waitress looked grateful and was already quick to her book and handing him a pen. 

“What’s her name?” He had the pen at the ready.

“Alanna.” 

He wrote it down quickly and got to work on a quick message. Max could see what he was writing and it was sweet. 

‘Dear Alanna, 

Your mom says you like our music and that it makes you happy. On behalf of the band, I’m glad we could put a smile on your face. Make sure you keep it there, don’t let anyone try to tear you down. - Andy Biersack.’

“There you go,” he said handing the little book to the waitress who thanked him graciously. She let him know how happy her daughter would be. This made Andy give off the smile she had grown fond of, although, she had grown fond of everything to do with this man. She had fallen so hard for him in such a short amount of time already.

 Max was also happy that Andy was able to make other people smile as well. 

"Now, what can I get you both?” We gave our orders to her happily. We had gotten the same thing, the all you can eat ribs with delicious apple butter sauce. 

"I know this is a weird request but can you keep the bones here until we are done? I want to see who can eat more,” she said. A bashful look on her face that only made the woman smile more. She knew it was a strange request, but she watched the mischievous smile stretch across Andy’s face as well. 

They loved these small competitions. Andy or Max would make a comment about beating the other and oh boy, it was game on. 

So far, they were tied 4-4. Max wanted to break that tie to see who the winner of their stupid competition was before he left. For the night, she didn’t even want to think about him leaving. She just wanted to enjoy the little bit of time left she had with him. 

It took a good 20 minutes for their food to arrive and when it did, Max looked him in the eye. “Okay, only rule, eat until you can’t eat anymore.”

Andy nodded and got his first rib ready. “Okay, ready...”

She got herself ready as well. 

“Set.” 

They looked each other dead in the eye.

“GO!”

And of course, Andy won. By one rib. Max was devastated at the loss. Never had she found anyone that could actually out eat her at ribs. She was also glad. Their little feud was over. 

“Now, what’s next on the agenda tonight?” Andy asked and you looked at the only thing that wasn’t crossed off on his list of things to do and that was go to the island.

“Hoping on the ferry and going to the island,” she said happily. She loved driving on the island. The scenery was beautiful and it never got old to her. When Andy had added that to their list she was over the moon. She could share her treasure with him. 

The waitress came back, “finally full?”

Max nodded, she leaned back and let out a sigh. She told the woman that they were delicious and she was having more the next time she came back. 

Andy insisted on paying the bill and the woman asked the question that threw the two for a loop. “So when did the two of you start going out?”

“Uh...” she was at a loss. She glanced at Andy and he shrugged his beautiful slime shoulders. 

“We’re... not,” he said quietly surprising the girl. 

She commented on how cute they were together and that she could totally see the two as a couple. Max wanted that too, but she could not bring herself to telling her secret crush that information. 

Andy glanced at her again before suggesting they get going before they missed the sunset on the water. They left and Andy left her a big tip for how incredible she was too them. 

***

Andy POV

They were at the other side of the island and the waves were crashing along the large boulders. They sunset was a bright pink and purple and it highlighted Max’s blonde curls amazingly.

“Wave ‘hi’ to New York State,” she said and her blue and silver eyes sparkled with delight. It was clear she loved this place a lot. His heart swelled at the ease she seemed to be in standing on top of one of the rocks, just as a wave crashed. 

The sun hit the water giving her a sparkling curtain of pinks, purples and blues, Andy was already about to take a picture and caught the moment perfectly. She was now becoming his wallpaper on his phone. 

He went to join her, wanting to share in her joy. He was thinking of admitting the feelings he had for her that night. He didn’t know if he could take not telling her. 

“Max,” he said and she turned to look at him with a curious glint in her eye. “I need to tell you something, something important. Now don’t laugh at me promise?”

“Promise,” she held out her pinky for a pinky promise. 

“I want you to be mine,” he gushed before he could come up with a way to say that properly. She seemed to wait for him to continue. “I think I am falling in love with you. I know we only just met two weeks ago, but I have never felt this way about anybody before and...”

And her soft lips were on his, cutting him off from his rant. He returned the kiss. Explosions of joy and happiness were filling his chest. Once he pulled away and dropped his gaze to her slightly swollen lips. 

“Of course i’ll be yours Batman,” she giggled. “You don’t know how long I have been waiting for you to ask me.”

So for the rest of their time on the island, Andy held Max tight in his arms, kissing her frequently and loving every moment he was spending with her, 

He honestly did not want this moment to end, momentarily forgetting that he was leaving tomorrow, that he was in a band and made music at all for that matter. 

In that moment, it was just him and her happy and together. 

[orally-herring]

Song Lyric Prompts

From: Creative Prompts for Writing Found: Here and Here

These will not be based on the songs, but whatever the lyric pops into my head at the time of writing it. I could be completely off base from what the song actually represents, but that's not the point of it.

Softly we tremble tonight - Cat and Mouse, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus We’re so happy (we could die) - Blood & Glitter, Lord of the Lost There′s no remedy for memory - Dark Paradise, Lana del Rey Love is the warmest colour - Nara, alt-J We gotta stop pretending who we are - Don’t speak, No Doubt A force more powerful than gravity - Satellite, Lena Meyer-Landrut They turned to dust (all that I adored) - Things we lost in the fire, Bastille Lose all sense of time - Coastline, Hollow Caves Sometimes quiet is violent - Car Radio, Twenty One Pilots I′ll show you mine (if you show me yours first) - Swing Life Away, Rise Against So beautiful and wild - Tonight, Reamonn See your face lit by starlight - Colorado Sunrise, 3OH!3 Misunderstandings and words unspoken - Don’t waste my time, Victor Lundberg When we stole the night - Another heart calls, The All-American Rejects The way that we love (like it’s forever) - Happy Ending, Mika But it’s home to me - Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Green Day Like memories of dying days - Savior, Rise Against Electricity between both of us - Landfill, Daughter I slept in last night’s clothes and tomorrow′s dreams - Uma Thurman, Fall Out Boy There’ll be a riot (cause I know you) - Robbers, The 1975 All of your flaws and all of my flaws - Flaws, Bastille Crossing all the lines - Girls Like Girls, Hayley Kiyoko Misery’s your master - She’s the blade, Sugarcult But we go where we want to - Lane Boy, Twenty One Pilots Between the lines of fear and blame - How to save a life, The Fray There’s a heavy cloud inside my head - Lemon Tree, Fool’s Garden A very common crisis - Fluorescent Adolescent, Arctic Monkeys Turn the light out, say goodnight - Fake Empire, The National Let′s write a song that we can dance to - Jersey, Mayday Parade There′s strangers everywhere - This isn’t everything you are, Snow Patrol I can’t steal you (like you stole me) - You, The Pretty Reckless Spinning all these stories - Skinny Bitch, Lena Meyer-Landrut It’s just another rainy Sunday afternoon - Lemon Tree, Fool’s Garden When I watch the world burn (all I think about is you) - Doom Days, Bastille Let’s compare scars (I′ll tell you whose is worse) - Swing Life Away, Rise Against Sunsets and silhouette dreams - You be the anchor […], Mayday Parade Who could deny these butterflies? - Remembering Sunday, All Time Low As we say our long goodbyes - Run, Snow Patrol Naked bodies look like porcelain - Love, Daughter I wish you were a stranger - Over my head (Cable Car), The Fray Send my regards to hell - Blame, Bastille We do fall before we rise - Blood & Glitter, Lord of the Lost Our hearts beat (control them) - In spirit golden, I Blame Coco Admiring from afar - we fell in love in october, girl in red The safest place to hide - MakeDamnSure, Taking Back Sunday I am my own worst enemy - The Consequence, You Me At Six My lover and my best friend - Rehab, Rihanna It’s a sign that someone loves you - Don’t swallow the cap, The National There is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin - Take me to church, Hozier The wonderful mess that we made - Flaws, Bastille Drink the poison lightly - I’m not the one, 3OH!3 Saving life in the dark - Believe, Yellowcard To warm the cold side of the pillow - Hunger of the Pine, alt-J I’d probably still adore you - 505, Arctic Monkeys You killed me with your smile - Tonight, Reamonn Mistaken for strangers by your own friends - Mistaken for strangers, The National Three whole words and eight letters late - Fireworks, You Me At Six You say you love me and you roll your eyes - Everyway that I can, Sertab Erener I’m so surprised you want to dance with me now - Pink Rabbits, The National To distract our hearts from ever missing them - Youth, Daughter

[roatsww]

A Whisper In The Wind

My voice is but a whisper in the wind, the wind howls, it gusts and blusters in all its pent-up fury, and my voice, trying to shout against the injustice that I see and I live, is but a silent whisper in the wind of tyranny.

For days I have felt that I am about to step off of the cross, I feel so much in my heart, I feel that I am un-heard, a Don Quixote tilting at windmills, with not an answer to a prayer in sight, I rant and I rave, I curse and I argue, and I fight with God, why did You, give me this heart that feels so much? Why did You, give me these eyes that see so much? Why did You, give me these ears that hear so much? Why did You, give me this tremendous void within me, that just draws it all in, and carries it alone? Why don’t You, give me release?

I do not understand, my voice, my prayers, my entreaties go un-heard, and without answer, Why?

I dread opening a news-paper, I fear switching on the television, I even avoid looking at what has been posted on my Facebook feed, because I hear it, I see it, and then I feel it!

I feel the fear, I see the pain, and I know the horror, because I have lived it.

I see the fear and anguish, because I live it!

I see the fear; I see the bewilderment, because I have lived it!

Can anybody ever understand, why I felt that I was about to step off of the cross, why I felt that God had abandoned the world, why I felt that God had turned a deaf ear to my prayers? Can anyone ever understand the anguish at my inner turmoil? Can anyone ever understand my feelings of helplessness, and my loneliness of carrying the storms of other people’s lives inside of me? I feel other people’s lives, because I have lived their lives, I have walked the streets of the dying, at a time before ARV’s, when I would go to those who were dying just to hold their hands, so that they wouldn’t face the fear of dying alone. I have walked the hills and valleys of a cholera epidemic to be with the people, so that they wouldn’t feel alone when their loved ones were dying of a disease for which they had no understanding.

I see them the suicide bombers and/or gunmen, walking into public places and indiscriminately killing innocent people, I see them, the politician’s, inciting racism and xenophobia, I see them the so-called leaders of the community calling on their followers to commit wanton destruction and murder, it makes me want to lock myself in my home and hide myself from the world, but, I cannot, because there is no escape from reality.

I ask God; why do I see it? Why do I feel it so intensely? Why does it affect me so badly? Why does it fill me with such an intense fear and such a barely controlled anger at the same time? Why me? Why not some-body else?

I see a world that I dearly love, being destroyed a little bit every day, and I do not understand it, the world is being destroyed by the winds of hate!

As a young man, I also wrote often, most of which has gone by the wayside, and I remember writing quite often, the following words: “If I could hold every broken and bleeding heart in my hand I would, but, I cannot, because I am only a man.” They were very big words for a young man to write, for I hadn’t lived or experienced as much of life back then, as I have now, but even today those words are still a part of me, and I still whisper them to myself on a regular basis, but these days, I whisper them with great respect for what the words mean in the world we live in today, because now I know that they can so easily be the words of a fool.

I ask myself how do I live in this world gone mad, how do I protect both the strength and the fragility that is me, How do I do it alone with a heart and a soul that have grown weary of seeing, hearing and feeling so much of the pain that the world has to offer, without having any-one to carry the burden with me, yes I still battle with God on a daily basis, that He has let me carry everything with only my friends to walk by my side and ease that which I see and feel so deeply?

How do I make my voice heard, when it is nothing more than a silent whisper in the winds of hate and agony?

I can only think of one thing, and that is to try not to fall off the cross, because Jesus left us the following:

                                    “Love one another, as I have loved you!”

I can only plead, that every-one:

                        “Reach out and touch some-body, with just a little bit of love”

Perhaps these are just the ramblings of a fool, but, if that be the case, then this fool is tired of walking through the winds of hate. This fool’s voice will be heard, even if it is no more than a whisper in the wind.

Copyright exists on this and belongs to the author Michael Drysdale, you may not use it without the permission of the author. Both the photograph and the Text are copyrighted.

[turnpage]

send me a ✐ for a random sentence starter from my muse (1-1500) — tw: profanity, mild nsfw, long list

generator here quotes compiled from here inspired by

feel free to change to fit your preferences as need.

❨1❩ ❛ They are dreams, but I’m too out of control, I lose myself in them, and I’ve already lost too much to let them take over. ❜
 ❨2❩ ❛ Sometimes human places create inhuman monsters. ❜ ❨3❩ ❛ I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just going to bash your brains in. ❜ ❨4❩ ❛ Monsters are real. Ghosts are too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win. ❜ ❨5❩ ❛ The world's a hard place. It doesn't care. It doesn't hate you and me, but it doesn't love us, either. ❜ ❨6❩ ❛ The tears that heal are also the tears that scald and scourge. ❜ ❨7❩ ❛ Pull your act together and just go on. ❜ ❨8❩ ❛ I had never dreamed there could be so much pain in a life when there is nothing physically wrong. I hurt all the time. ❜ ❨9❩ ❛ Tough old world, baby. If you're not bolted together tightly, you're gonna shake, rattle, and roll before you turn thirty. ❜ ❨10❩ ❛ Are you sure self-pity is a luxury you can afford? ❜ ❨11❩ ❛ Truth comes out. In the end it always comes out. ❜ ❨12❩ ❛ Living by your wits is always knowing where the wasps are. ❜ ❨13❩ ❛ No matter where you go, the same asshole gets off the plane. ❜ ❨14❩ ❛ We sometimes need to create unreal monsters and bogies to stand in for all the things we fear in our real lives. ❜ ❨15❩ ❛ That’s your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. ❜ ❨16❩ ❛ Human nature, baby. Grab it and growl. ❜ ❨17❩ ❛ God wiped snot out of his nose and that was you. ❜ ❨18❩ ❛ Run away. Quick. And remember how much I love you. ❜ ❨19❩ ❛ How many times, over how many years, have I—a grown adult—asked for the mercy of another chance? ❜ ❨20❩ ❛ I was suddenly so sick of myself, so revolted. ❜ ❨21❩ ❛ You listen to me. I’m going to talk to you about it this once and never again this same way. ❜ ❨22❩ ❛ But those pieces, they’ll never fit just the same way again. Never in this world. ❜ ❨23❩ ❛ Dying is a part of living. You have to keep tuning in to that if you expect to be a whole person. ❜ ❨24❩ ❛ Officious little prick. ❜ ❨25❩ ❛ I’ve been sleepwalking again, my dear. — The plants are moving under the rug. ❜ ❨26❩ ❛ How I wish you were fear. ❜ ❨27❩ ❛ But it was a dreadful kind of curiosity, the kind that makes you peek through your fingers during the scariest parts of a scary movie. ❜ ❨28❩ ❛ All we have is time, you know. An eternity of time. Or shall we end it? Might as well. After all, we're missing the party. ❜ ❨29❩ ❛ We all remember our pleasant dreams more clearly than the scary ones. ❜ ❨30❩ ❛ The way things should be and the way things are hardly ever get together. ❜ ❨31❩ ❛ Got to be regular if you want to be happy. ❜ ❨32❩ ❛ But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. ❜ ❨33❩ ❛ He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none. ❜ ❨34❩ ❛ Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep. ❜ ❨35❩ ❛ It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment's carelessness.  ❜ ❨36❩ ❛ If I had ever believed it, I no longer do. ❜ ❨37❩ ❛ I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands. ❜ ❨38❩ ❛ I cannot bear this world a moment longer. ❜ ❨39❩ ❛ I have a better idea. I will do as I please. ❜ ❨40❩ ❛ All my life has been murk and depths, but I am not a part of that dark water. I am a creature within it. ❜ ❨41❩ ❛ You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see. ❜ ❨42❩ ❛ When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world. ❜ ❨43❩ ❛ When I was born, the word for what I was did not exist. ❜ ❨44❩ ❛ But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults. ❜ ❨45❩ ❛ I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. ❜ ❨46❩ ❛ This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive. ❜ ❨47❩ ❛ You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you. ❜ ❨48❩ ❛ Yet because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me. ❜ ❨49❩ ❛ If now I am wise, it is only because I have been fool enough for a hundred lifetimes. ❜ ❨50❩ ❛ You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite. ❜ ❨51❩ ❛ Give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for. ❜ ❨52❩ ❛ I have been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that is only a shape I’ve been poured into. I do not have to keep it. ❜ ❨53❩ ❛ I wake sometimes in the dark terrified by my life's precariousness, its thready breath. ❜ ❨54❩ ❛ Understanding the world is a matter of keeping very still and showing no emotions, leaving room for others to reveal themselves. ❜ ❨55❩ ❛ Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two. ❜ ❨56❩ ❛ The truth is, men make terrible pigs. ❜ ❨57❩ ❛ My father has never been able to imagine the world without himself in it. ❜ ❨58❩ ❛ This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh. ❜ ❨59❩ ❛ Witches are not so delicate. ❜ ❨60❩ ❛ Those who fight against prophecy only draw it more tightly around their throats. ❜ ❨61❩ ❛ I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow. I would have done that toil a thousand times to keep such power in my hands. ❜ ❨62❩ ❛ There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too. ❜ ❨63❩ ❛ The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them. ❜ ❨64❩ ❛ Life is warped. I'm just in sync. ❜ ❨65❩ ❛ Now it's a whisper from the past. ❜ ❨66❩ ❛ But hatred and viciousness are addictive. You can get high on them. Once you've had a little, you start shaking if you don't get more. ❜ ❨67❩ ❛ Why is it always such a surprise? The moon. Even though we know it's coming. Every time we see it, it makes us pause, and hush. ❜ ❨68❩ ❛ Perfection exacts a price, but it's the imperfect who pay it. ❜ ❨69❩ ❛ What is 'belief' but a willingness to suspend the negatives?  ❜ ❨70❩ ❛ I have scars, inside me. ❜ ❨71❩ ❛ The dead are not entirely dead but are alive in a different way; a paler way admittedly, and somewhat darker. ❜ ❨72❩ ❛ However dark, a darkness with voices in it is better than a silent void. ❜ ❨73❩ ❛ Amazing how quickly the past becomes idyllic. ❜ ❨74❩ ❛ It is another way of saying tough luck. To people you aren’t going to help out. ❜ ❨75❩ ❛ I'm waiting, far off in the future. ❜ ❨76❩ ❛ The only sure camouflage is unpredictability. ❜ ❨77❩ ❛ There are so many of them, and each one of them is doing part of the killing, whether they know it or not. ❜ ❨78❩ ❛ First rule: limit bloodshed by making sure that none of your own gets spilled. ❜ ❨79❩ ❛ I long to swim in liquid moonlight. ❜ ❨80❩ ❛ That's right, I don’t like to be summoned on trivial matters. ❜ ❨81❩ ❛ The part that really made me happy was that you wanted me to be happy. ❜ ❨82❩ ❛ Cut that part out of us: the grinning, elemental malice. Begin us anew. ❜ ❨83❩ ❛ Where there are wars, there will be crows, the carrion-fanciers. And ravens too, the warbirds, the eyeball gourmands. And vultures, the holy birds of yore, old connoisseurs of rot. ❜ ❨84❩ ❛ At last. It's you. ❜ ❨85❩ ❛ No, you will not be cooked on a fire when you die. Because you are not a fish. ❜ ❨86❩ ❛ Take what the moment offers. Don’t close doors. Be thankful. ❜ ❨87❩ ❛ How many others have stood in this place? Left behind, with all gone, all swept away. ❜ ❨88❩ ❛ Is it disapproval or extreme lust? With some men it’s hard to tell the difference. ❜ ❨89❩ ❛ My hair was driving me crazy, but then … I died. ❜ ❨90❩ ❛ Seek and ye shall find, eventually. And you found. You’re right, I don’t dispute that. Sorry. ❜ ❨91❩ ❛ Everything digests, and is digested. ❜ ❨92❩ ❛ My head was once a filing cabinet. Now it’s a flurry of papers, floating on a draft. ❜ ❨93❩ ❛ You cannot keep bumping your head against reality and saying it is not there. ❜ ❨94❩ ❛ I have a feeling that inside you somewhere, there’s something nobody knows about. ❜ ❨95❩ ❛ And if I don’t want to die, I’ve got to start living. ❜ ❨96❩ ❛ The world is a beautiful place. Don’t forget that. And don’t miss it. ❜ ❨97❩ ❛ I was fighting for my life. So I must not want to die. ❜ ❨98❩ ❛ Something’s happening to me, through me, something dangerous and new. ❜ ❨99❩ ❛ It’s taken root, a poison tree; it’s grown, fanning out, vines winding round my gut, my lungs, my heart. ❜ ❨100❩ ❛ We’re interpreters. We’re translators. ❜ ❨101❩ ❛ You’ll notice I’m not asking what made you this way. ❜ ❨102❩ ❛ No family, happy or unhappy, is quite like any other. Tolstoy was chock-fullo’shit. Remember that. ❜ ❨103❩ ❛ We lived in monochrome those nights. ❜ ❨104❩ ❛ You live in a dream. You’re a sleepwalker, blind. How do you know what the world is like? ❜ ❨105❩ ❛ Do you know, if you rip off the fronts of houses, you’d find swine? ❜ ❨106❩ ❛ I stand here in the dark: cold, utterly alone, full of fear and something that feels like longing. ❜ ❨107❩ ❛ The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. ❜ ❨108❩ ❛ Not to warm the flesh, but solely to please the eye. ❜ ❨109❩ ❛ Selective emotional detachment. ❜ ❨110❩ ❛ Not for me, or at least not today. ❜ ❨111❩ ❛ Dead but not gone, watching life surge forward around me, powerless to intervene. ❜ ❨112❩ ❛ Do I sound like a hillbilly saying that? ❜ ❨113❩ ❛ Remember, you’ve got your secret weapon. ❜ ❨114❩ ❛ The dream drains away like water. The memory, really. I try to scoop it up in my palms, but it’s gone. ❜ ❨115❩ ❛ My shadow stretches along the carpet, as though trying to detach itself from me. ❜ ❨116❩ ❛ It curls away from me, like blood in water. ❜ ❨117❩ ❛ It’s been so long since I felt the rain. Or wind—the caress of wind. ❜ ❨118❩ ❛ But snow I never want to feel again. ❜ ❨119❩ ❛ Through adversity to the stars. ❜ ❨120❩ ❛ No hero. No sleuth. I am locked in. I am locked out. ❜ ❨121❩ ❛ Thinking hasn't gotten me anywhere so far. ❜ ❨122❩ ❛ The face you give the world tells the world how to treat you. ❜ ❨123❩ ❛ Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. ❜ ❨124❩ ❛ Women get consumed. ❜ ❨125❩ ❛ Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you're really doing it to them. ❜ ❨126❩ ❛ A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort. ❜ ❨127❩ ❛ Safer to be feared than loved. ❜ ❨128❩ ❛ I ached once, hard, like a period typed at the end of a sentence. ❜ ❨129❩ ❛ It's impossible to compete with the dead. I wish I could stop trying. ❜ ❨130❩ ❛ I always feel sad for the girl that I was. ❜ ❨131❩ ❛ Every time people said I was pretty, I thought of everything ugly swarming beneath my clothes. ❜ ❨132❩ ❛ How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky? Anything could happen. ❜ ❨133❩ ❛ See, there I am. I told you I lived. I told you I was. ❜ ❨134❩ ❛ Sometimes I think I won't ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand. ❜ ❨135❩ ❛ To refuse has so many more consequences than submitting. ❜ ❨136❩ ❛ I'm here. I don't usually feel that I am. ❜ ❨137❩ ❛ I'm tired of dying. ❜ ❨138❩ ❛ What if you hurt because it feels so good? ❜ ❨139❩ ❛ How confusing to live in the shadow of a shadow. ❜ ❨140❩ ❛ Do you ever feel like bad things are going to happen, and you can’t stop them? You can’t do anything, you just have to wait? ❜ ❨141❩ ❛ Sometimes my scars have a mind of their own. ❜ ❨142❩ ❛ Everyone has their own version of a memory. ❜ ❨143❩ ❛ Isn’t a smile a girl’s best weapon? ❜ ❨144❩ ❛ My sense of weightlessness, I think, comes from the fact that I know so little about my past. ❜ ❨145❩ ❛ Do what I want; I might like you. ❜ ❨146❩ ❛ I feel sorry for Persephone because even when she’s back with the living, people are afraid of her because of where’s she’s been. ❜ ❨147❩ ❛ She has never told me she loved me, and I never assumed she did. ❜ ❨148❩ ❛ The sight of it actually does something to you, makes you less human. ❜ ❨149❩ ❛ It infects you. It ruined me. ❜ ❨150❩ ❛ Your health is not a debt you just cancel. The body collects. ❜ ❨151❩ ❛ Men love to put things inside women, don’t they? ❜ ❨152❩ ❛ We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom. ❜ ❨153❩ ❛ Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women. ❜ ❨154❩ ❛ The strongest of all warriors are these two — time and patience. ❜ ❨155❩ ❛ If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war. ❜ ❨156❩ ❛ There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth. ❜ ❨157❩ ❛ The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness. ❜ ❨158❩ ❛ Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy. ❜ ❨159❩ ❛ It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong. ❜ ❨160❩ ❛ You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love. ❜ ❨161❩ ❛ If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed. ❜ ❨162❩ ❛ We are asleep until we fall in love! ❜ ❨163❩ ❛ I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself. ❜ ❨164❩ ❛ Everything I know, I know because of love. ❜ ❨165❩ ❛ Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. ❜ ❨166❩ ❛ If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself. ❜ ❨167❩ ❛ Yes, love, but not the love that loves for something, to gain something, or because of something, but that love that I felt for the first time, when dying, I saw my enemy and yet loved him. ❜ ❨168❩ ❛ How can one be well...when one suffers morally? ❜ ❨169❩ ❛ Kings are the slaves of history. ❜ ❨170❩ ❛ God is the same everywhere. ❜ ❨171❩ ❛ Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy. ❜ ❨172❩ ❛ One must be cunning and wicked in this world. ❜ ❨173❩ ❛ We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done them. ❜ ❨174❩ ❛ When one's head is gone one doesn't weep over one's hair! ❜ ❨175❩ ❛ For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed? ❜ ❨176❩ ❛ He did what heroes do after their work is accomplished; he died. ❜ ❨177❩ ❛ Life is too long to say anything definitely; always say perhaps. ❜ ❨178❩ ❛ Everything ends in death, everything. Death is terrible. ❜ ❨179❩ ❛ The distant and impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable. ❜ ❨180❩ ❛ How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? ❜ ❨181❩ ❛ The wolves should be fed and the sheep kept safe. ❜ ❨182❩ ❛ When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. ❜ ❨183❩ ❛ My memory is a patchwork of occurrences, of discontinuous events roughly sewn together: the parts I remember, I remember precisely, whilst other sections seem to have vanished completely. ❜ ❨184❩ ❛ Would it be worse to love someone who is no longer there, or not to love someone who is? ❜ ❨185❩ ❛ Like mirrors stories prepare us for the day to come. They distract us from the things in darkness. ❜ ❨186❩ ❛ It is not that I was credulous, simply that I believed in all things dark and dangerous. ❜ ❨187❩ ❛ Sometimes you do things you regret, but there's nothing you can do about them. Times change. Doors close behind you. You move on. ❜ ❨188❩ ❛ Love will be an impulse that will inspire and ruin in equal measure. ❜ ❨189❩ ❛ He died alone. It don't matter a rat's ass whether there was anyone with him or not. He died alone. ❜ ❨190❩ ❛ It was love, I knew, and it tasted like champagne in my mind. ❜ ❨191❩ ❛ The end of the world is a strange concept. The world is always ending, and the end is always being averted, by love or foolishness or just plain old dumb luck. ❜ ❨192❩ ❛ She was my dream; and if you touch a dream it vanishes, like a soap bubble. ❜ ❨193❩ ❛ Daylight is always safe. ❜ ❨194❩ ❛ If not for death, they'd be content to simply exist, but with death, well, their lives will have meaning. ❜ ❨195❩ ❛ You want to know the future, love? Then wait. ❜ ❨196❩ ❛ There are things in the darkness beneath us that wish us harm. ❜ ❨197❩ ❛ Fairy tales are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated ❜ ❨198❩ ❛ But sometimes you leave blood on your instruments. ❜ ❨199❩ ❛ I'd like to be a wolf. Not all the time. Just sometimes. In the dark. I would run through the forests. ❜ ❨200❩ ❛ You've seen them. They have mouths that twitch, and eyes that stare, and they babble and they mewl and they whimper. ❜ ❨201❩ ❛ They are not mad, or rather, the loss of their sanity is the lesser of their problems. ❜ ❨202❩ ❛ Good a reason for writing as I know: releasing demons, letting them fly. ❜ ❨203❩ ❛ That miserable state in which everything seems flat and of equal importance; when nothing matters, and in which reality seems scraped thin and threadbare. ❜ ❨204❩ ❛ Someone had scrawled graffiti in black marker on the metal: JUST DIE, it said. Like it is easy. ❜ ❨205❩ ❛ Winter started today. The sky turned grey and the snow began to fall and it did not stop falling until well after dark. ❜ ❨206❩ ❛ Memory is the great deceiver. ❜ ❨207❩ ❛ Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. ❜ ❨208❩ ❛ I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.  ❜ ❨209❩ ❛ If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. ❜ ❨210❩ ❛ I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other. ❜ ❨211❩ ❛ But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me. ❜ ❨212❩ ❛ I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other would have borne it. ❜ ❨213❩ ❛ There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves. ❜ ❨214❩ ❛ One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other. ❜ ❨215❩ ❛ Better be without sense than misapply it as you do. ❜ ❨216❩ ❛ You must be the best judge of your own happiness. ❜ ❨217❩ ❛ Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing ; but I have never been in love ; it is not my way, or my nature ; and I do not think I ever shall. ❜ ❨218❩ ❛ Indeed, I am very sorry to be right in this instance. I would much rather have been merry than wise. ❜ ❨219❩ ❛ If I have not spoken, it is because I am afraid I will awaken myself from this dream. ❜ ❨220❩ ❛ If a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. ❜ ❨221❩ ❛ Faultless in spite of all her faults. ❜ ❨222❩ ❛ A heroine whom no one but myself will much like. ❜ ❨223❩ ❛ There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart. ❜ ❨224❩ ❛ Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its fragrance on the desert air. ❜ ❨225❩ ❛ I pity you. I thought you cleverer. ❜ ❨226❩ ❛ Evil to some is always good to others. ❜ ❨227❩ ❛ I certainly will not persuade myself to feel more than I do. ❜ ❨228❩ ❛ She is loveliness itself. ❜ ❨229❩ ❛ Time does not compose me. ❜ ❨230❩ ❛ A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her. ❜ ❨231❩ ❛ I do not find myself making any use of the word sacrifice. ❜ ❨232❩ ❛ I am quite enough in love. I should be sorry to be any more. ❜ ❨233❩ ❛ I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next moment. ❜ ❨234❩ ❛ I examined my own heart. And there you were. Never, I fear, to be removed. ❜ ❨235❩ ❛ With all your little faults, you are an excellent creature. ❜ ❨236❩ ❛ You have another long walk before you. ❜ ❨237❩ ❛ The child's laughter is pure until he first laughs at a clown. ❜ ❨238❩ ❛ What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? ❜ ❨239❩ ❛ Out of the frying pan into the fire! ❜ ❨240❩ ❛ We must all make do with the rags of love we find flapping on the scarecrow of humanity. ❜ ❨241❩ ❛ She sleeps. And now she wakes each day a little less. ❜ ❨242❩ ❛ And, oh, God . . . how frequently I weep! ❜ ❨243❩ ❛ From the coffin of your madness there is no escape. ❜ ❨244❩ ❛ I am feeling supernatural tonight. I want to eat diamonds. ❜ ❨245❩ ❛ All the same there is a chance that if we keep on shaking our chains, one day, some day, the clasps upon the shackles will part. ❜ ❨246❩ ❛ It was sad music fit to make you cut your throat. ❜ ❨247❩ ❛ Nothing is more boring than being forced to play. ❜ ❨248❩ ❛ Amongst the monsters, I am well hidden; who looks for a leaf in a forest? ❜ ❨249❩ ❛ Wherein does a woman’s honour reside? In her vagina or in her spirit? ❜ ❨250❩ ❛ Perhaps...I could not be content with mere contentment! ❜ ❨251❩ ❛ Have you ever stared stark failure in the face? The trick is to outstare it. ❜ ❨252❩ ❛ Sometimes it seems that the faces exist of themselves, in a disembodied somewhere, waiting for the one who will wear them, who will bring them to life. ❜ ❨253❩ ❛ I have the febrile gaiety of a being without a past, without a present, yet I exist. ❜ ❨254❩ ❛ I felt myself turning, willy-nilly, from a woman into an idea. ❜ ❨255❩ ❛ She looks wonderful, but she doesn't look right. ❜ ❨256❩ ❛ The one-eyed man will be King in the country of the blind. ❜ ❨257❩ ❛ I raised you up to fly to the heavens, not to brood over a clutch of eggs! ❜ ❨258❩ ❛ I love to hear my bones rattle. That’s how I know I’m alive. ❜ ❨259❩ ❛ I learnt, first, as the birds do, from the birds. ❜ ❨260❩ ❛ Inside and outside match exactly, but both are badly wrong. ❜ ❨261❩ ❛ During the less-than-blink of time it took the last chime to die, there came a vertiginous sensation. ❜ ❨262❩ ❛ I fear a wound not of the body but the soul, an irreconcilable division between myself and the rest of humankind. ❜ ❨263❩ ❛ I fear the proof of my own singularity. ❜ ❨264❩ ❛ Still nothing could calm the fearful storm in my erupting skin. ❜ ❨265❩ ❛ Petersburg, loveliest of all hallucinations. ❜ ❨266❩ ❛ A breathless second between black forest and the frozen sea. ❜ ❨267❩ ❛ I'm beginning to feel totally cut off from the world. ❜ ❨268❩ ❛ What does this all mean? Where are we? ❜ ❨269❩ ❛ Sometimes I bleed. ❜ ❨270❩ ❛ If you see a ghost, you say "hello". ❜ ❨271❩ ❛ The war is not over. ❜ ❨272❩ ❛ You're not going. You left us once already. ❜ ❨273❩ ❛ You can’t go! ❜ ❨274❩ ❛ I loved you, but that wasn't enough, was it? ❜ ❨275❩ ❛ If you're dead, then leave me in peace. ❜ ❨276❩ ❛ The only thing that moves here is the light, but it changes everything. ❜ ❨277❩ ❛ I won't ask for forgiveness for something I didn't do! ❜ ❨278❩ ❛ Sometimes the world of the living gets mixed up with the world of the dead. ❜ ❨279❩ ❛ Death of a loved one can lead people to do the strangest things. ❜ ❨280❩ ❛ Sooner or later, they will find you. ❜ ❨281❩ ❛ They're everywhere - they say this house is theirs. ❜ ❨282❩ ❛ You're always teasing me, and telling lies. I'm sick of it. ❜ ❨283❩ ❛ Others will come. Sometimes we'll sense them. Other times, we won't. ❜ ❨284❩ ❛ No crying now. No crying. Stop that. Here. Look what an awful face you've got when you cry. ❜ ❨285❩ ❛ You listen to me. I've seen them too. ❜ ❨286❩ ❛ You'll see. There are going to be some big surprises. There are going to be... changes. ❜ ❨287❩ ❛ Why did you go and fight that stupid war that had nothing to do with us? Why didn't you stay like the others did? ❜ ❨288❩ ❛ Your place was here with your family. ❜ ❨289❩ ❛ So you say you know this house well? ❜ ❨290❩ ❛ I wasn't expecting you so soon. ❜ ❨291❩ ❛ What's the matter? Has the cat got your tongue? ❜ ❨292❩ ❛ You mean they just vanished? Into thin air? ❜ ❨293❩ ❛ No door must be opened without the previous one being closed first. ❜ ❨294❩ ❛ Here, most of the time, you can hardly see your way. ❜ ❨295❩ ❛ Whatever you do, don't open the curtains. ❜ ❨296❩ ❛ Now, come on. Eyes closed. ❜ ❨297❩ ❛ We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re all going to die, without really finding out the big answers. ❜ ❨298❩ ❛ By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be. ❜ ❨299❩ ❛ I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. ❜ ❨300❩ ❛ And the reasons? There are no reasons. ❜ ❨301❩ ❛ Love does not exist, it's like religion, made to control you. ❜ ❨302❩ ❛ After all, we're not fucking stupid. At least, we're not that fucking stupid. ❜ ❨303❩ ❛ You fucking knew that fucking cunt would fuck some cunt. ❜ ❨304❩ ❛ Everything in the street today seems soft focus. ❜ ❨305❩ ❛ What does that make us? The lowest of the low. ❜ ❨306❩ ❛ Take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty, and you're still fuckin’ miles off the pace. ❜ ❨307❩ ❛ It’s as if everything is a copy of what you knew before, similar, yet somehow lacking in its usual qualities, a bit like the way things are in a dream. ❜ ❨308❩ ❛ It’s all okay, it’s all beautiful; but I fear that this internal sea is going to subside soon, leaving this poisonous shite washed up, stranded up in my body. ❜ ❨309❩ ❛ It cuts me up. It confuses me. ❜ ❨310❩ ❛ It's not funny laughter. This is lynch mob laughter. ❜ ❨311❩ ❛ Protect me from those who wish to help us. ❜ ❨312❩ ❛ They mean well, and they mean well to me, but there's no way under the sun that they can appreciate what I feel, what I need. ❜ ❨313❩ ❛ The pit of melancholy is a bottomless one, and I am descending fast. ❜ ❨314❩ ❛ Living like this is a full-time business. ❜ ❨315❩ ❛ I’ll stand or fall alone. ❜ ❨316❩ ❛ We are no wiser now than at the start. ❜ ❨317❩ ❛ This is pathetic, and fucking boring. ❜ ❨318❩ ❛ Death is usually a process, rather than an event. ❜ ❨319❩ ❛ We're ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? ❜ ❨320❩ ❛ We are all acquaintances now. ❜ ❨321❩ ❛ The problem is that this beautiful ocean carries with it loads of poisonous flotsam and jetsam. ❜ ❨322❩ ❛ Life is beautiful. I'm going to enjoy it, and I'm going to have a long life. ❜ ❨323❩ ❛ The grim reality of impending death can be talked away by trying to invest in the present reality of life. ❜ ❨324❩ ❛ There must be more to life than this. ❜ ❨325❩ ❛ We all see what we want to see. ❜ ❨326❩ ❛ Statistically speaking, you're more likely to be killed by a member of your own family or a close friend, than by anyone else. ❜ ❨327❩ ❛ What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question. ❜ ❨328❩ ❛ Maybe that's what love is: it's being pissed off. ❜ ❨329❩ ❛ You can forget who you are if you're alone too much. ❜ ❨330❩ ❛ Any religion is a shadow of God. But the shadows of God are not God. ❜ ❨331❩ ❛ Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly.  ❜ ❨332❩ ❛ We must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing. ❜ ❨333❩ ❛ Everyone wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing. ❜ ❨334❩ ❛ We shouldn't have been so scornful; we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young. ❜ ❨335❩ ❛ How easy it is, treachery. You just slide into it. ❜ ❨336❩ ❛ Amazing how the heart clutches at anything familiar, whimpering: Mine! Mine! ❜ ❨337❩ ❛ All creatures know that some must die ; that all the rest may take and eat. ❜ ❨338❩ ❛ Is this the image of a god? My tooth for yours, your eye for mine? ❜ ❨339❩ ❛ Without the light, no chance; without the dark, no dance. ❜ ❨340❩ ❛ Why are we designed to see the world as supremely beautiful just as we're about to be snuffed? Do rabbits feel the same as the fox teeth bite down on their necks? Is it mercy? ❜ ❨341❩ ❛ Love is useless, it leads you into dumb exchanges in which you give too much away, and then you get bitter and mean. ❜ ❨342❩ ❛ Maybe sadness is a kind of hunger. Maybe the two go together. ❜ ❨343❩ ❛ Now I can see how that can happen. You can fall in love with anybody -- a fool, a criminal, a nothing. There are no good rules. ❜ ❨344❩ ❛ If you really want to stay the same age you are now forever and ever, try jumping off the roof: death's a sure-fire method for stopping time. ❜ ❨345❩ ❛ You couldn’t leave words lying around where our enemies might find them. ❜ ❨346❩ ❛ I'm fine, for the moment. And the moment is the only time we can be fine in. ❜ ❨347❩ ❛ Because if you can't wish, why bother? ❜ ❨348❩ ❛ It's better to hope than mope! ❜ ❨349❩ ❛ Reality has too much darkness in it. Too many crows. ❜ ❨350❩ ❛ In any case, time is not a thing that passes, it’s a sea on which you float. ❜ ❨351❩ ❛ I know I’m deceiving myself, but I prefer to deceive myself. I desperately need to believe such pure joy is still possible. ❜ ❨352❩ ❛ Too much God and you overdose. God needs to be filtered. ❜ ❨353❩ ❛ Behind my eyelids I saw an animal. It was golden colour, with gentle green eyes and canine teeth, and curly wool instead of fur. It opened its mouth, but it did not speak. Instead, it yawned. ❜ ❨354❩ ❛ ‘Why can't I believe?’ I asked the darkness. ❜ ❨355❩ ❛ Everyone’s too sad for everything. ❜ ❨356❩ ❛ If you can’t stop the waves, go sailing. ❜ ❨357❩ ❛ I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary. ❜ ❨358❩ ❛ Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them. ❜ ❨359❩ ❛ In the end, we'll all become stories. ❜ ❨360❩ ❛ I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead. ❜ ❨361❩ ❛ If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. ❜ ❨362❩ ❛ If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. ❜ ❨363❩ ❛ Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results. ❜ ❨364❩ ❛ Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you've been. ❜ ❨365❩ ❛ Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? ❜ ❨366❩ ❛ We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly. ❜ ❨367❩ ❛ If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon? ❜ ❨368❩ ❛ You fit into me like a hook into an eye. ❜ ❨369❩ ❛ Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened. ❜ ❨370❩ ❛ Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. ❜ ❨371❩ ❛ Women have curious ways of hurting someone else. ❜ ❨372❩ ❛ This is the one song everyone would like to learn: the song that is irresistible: the song that forces men to leap overboard in squadrons. ❜ ❨373❩ ❛ Get rid of death. Make it be spring. ❜ ❨374❩ ❛ You are innocent as a bathtub full of bullets. ❜ ❨375❩ ❛ I am the space you desecrate as you pass through. ❜ ❨376❩ ❛ Favour me and give me riches, destroy my enemies. Save me from death. ❜ ❨377❩ ❛ She is a raw voice loose in the rooms beneath me. ❜ ❨378❩ ❛ Isn't the moon warm enough for you, why do you need the blanket of another body? ❜ ❨379❩ ❛ This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn. ❜ ❨380❩ ❛ If you look long enough eventually you will see me. ❜ ❨381❩ ❛ I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my head. ❜ ❨382❩ ❛ I would like to give you the silver branch, the small white flower, the one word that will protect you from the grief. ❜ ❨383❩ ❛ But some people can't tell where it hurts. They can't calm down. They can't ever stop howling. ❜ ❨384❩ ❛ How else can we live, these days, except in the midst of ruin? ❜ ❨385❩ ❛ What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question. ❜ ❨386❩ ❛ Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything. ❜ ❨387❩ ❛ We loved with a love that was more than love. ❜ ❨388❩ ❛ Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. ❜ ❨389❩ ❛ The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? ❜ ❨390❩ ❛ There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion. ❜ ❨391❩ ❛ Never to suffer would never to have been blessed. ❜ ❨392❩ ❛ Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear. ❜ ❨393❩ ❛ And all I loved, I loved alone. ❜ ❨394❩ ❛ Years of love have been forgot, in the hatred of a minute. ❜ ❨395❩ ❛ The best things in life make you sweaty. ❜ ❨396❩ ❛ There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. ❜ ❨397❩ ❛ Anything is better than this agony. ❜ ❨398❩ ❛ You fancy me mad. ❜ ❨399❩ ❛ I hear all things in the heaven and in the earth. ❜ ❨400❩ ❛ Who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? ❜ ❨401❩ ❛ Leave my loneliness unbroken! ❜ ❨402❩ ❛ A more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrills every fibre of my frame. ❜ ❨403❩ ❛ The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. ❜ ❨404❩ ❛ Let my heart be still a moment. ❜ ❨405❩ ❛ You call it hope —  It is but agony of desire. ❜ ❨406❩ ❛ Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not? ❜ ❨407❩ ❛ To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths! ❜ ❨408❩ ❛ The beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage. ❜ ❨409❩ ❛ Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive. ❜ ❨410❩ ❛ I have been happy, though in a dream. ❜ ❨411❩ ❛ Nevermore. ❜ ❨412❩ ❛ The truth is, I am heartily sick of this life. ❜ ❨413❩ ❛ I am convinced that every thing is going wrong. ❜ ❨414❩ ❛ The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls. ❜ ❨415❩ ❛ And if I died, at least I will have died for you! ❜ ❨416❩ ❛ It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. ❜ ❨417❩ ❛ Hurt and humiliation — But this, I can not take. ❜ ❨418❩ ❛ The walls in there have ears. ❜ ❨419❩ ❛ This is for your ears only. ❜ ❨420❩ ❛ What is it? You have me scared. ❜ ❨421❩ ❛ Whoever isn’t for us, is against us. ❜ ❨422❩ ❛ You are just a body; to be dumped, disposed of like a carcass, left out for the birds to feed on. ❜ ❨423❩ ❛ The dead will have to forgive me. ❜ ❨424❩ ❛ From now on and no matter how your mind may I change, I will not accept your help. ❜ ❨425❩ ❛ If death comes, so be it. There will be glory in it. ❜ ❨426❩ ❛ Live, then; and live with your choice. ❜ ❨427❩ ❛ I am doing what has to be done. ❜ ❨428❩ ❛ Nothing is going to stop the ones that love you from keeping on loving you. ❜ ❨429❩ ❛ Worst is the man who has all the good advice, and then because his nerve fails, fails to act in accordance with it, as a leader should. ❜ ❨430❩ ❛ Only a loony would walk himself into this. ❜ ❨431❩ ❛ Why do you need such fences and defences? ❜ ❨432❩ ❛ Enough. Do not anger me. ❜ ❨433❩ ❛ The gods, you think, will side with the likes of him? ❜ ❨434❩ ❛ Watch it. You are over stepping. ❜ ❨435❩ ❛ I warn you. You should keep a civil tongue. ❜ ❨436❩ ❛ There is no such thing as an oath the can not be broken. ❜ ❨437❩ ❛ Every now and then, the things you’d hardly let yourself imagine, actually happen. ❜ ❨438❩ ❛ And you stand over this? This is the truth? ❜ ❨439❩ ❛ The bigger the resistance, the bigger the collapse. ❜ ❨440❩ ❛ Iron that’s forged the hardest, snaps the quickest. ❜ ❨441❩ ❛ Even the wildest horses come to heel when they are reined & bitted right. ❜ ❨442❩ ❛ That’s how guilt affects some people. They break and everything comes out. ❜ ❨443❩ ❛ Will it be enough for you? To see me executed? ❜ ❨444❩ ❛ So you know something no one else knows? ❜ ❨445❩ ❛ They know it too. They are just too afraid to say it. ❜ ❨446❩ ❛ If you die, how will I keep on living? ❜ ❨447❩ ❛ There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, 'Consume me'. ❜ ❨448❩ ❛ How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. ❜ ❨449❩ ❛ Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body. ❜ ❨450❩ ❛ I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me. ❜ ❨451❩ ❛ For this moment, this one moment, we are together.  ❜ ❨452❩ ❛ Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder. ❜ ❨453❩ ❛ I am as neat as a cat in my habits. ❜ ❨454❩ ❛ Everything falls in a tremendous shower, dissolving me. ❜ ❨455❩ ❛ I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room. ❜ ❨456❩ ❛ We are cut, we are fallen. We are become part of that unfeeling universe ❨457❩ that sleeps when we are at our quickest and burns red when we lie ❨458❩ asleep. ❜ ❨459❩ ❛ These moments of escape are not to be despised. They come too seldom. ❜ ❨460❩ ❛ Up here my eyes are green leaves, unseeing. ❜ ❨461❩ ❛ The moment is all; the moment is enough. ❜ ❨462❩ ❛ I do not want to be admired. I want to give, to be given. ❜ ❨463❩ ❛ I am not one and simple, but complex and many. ❜ ❨464❩ ❛ And if you are dead, I shall weep. ❜ ❨465❩ ❛ But beauty must be broken daily to remain beautiful. ❜ ❨466❩ ❛ But our hatred is almost indistinguishable from our love. ❜ ❨467❩ ❛ I desired always to stretch the night and fill it fuller and fuller with dreams. ❜ ❨468❩ ❛ Life is a dream surely. ❜ ❨469❩ ❛ I think sometimes I am not a woman, but the light that falls on this gate, on this ground. I am the seasons, I think sometimes, January, May, November; the mud, the mist, the dawn. ❜ ❨470❩ ❛ Oh, I am in love with life! ❜ ❨471❩ ❛ I have been knotted; I have been torn apart. ❜ ❨472❩ ❛ There was no freedom in life, and certainly there was none in death. ❜ ❨473❩ ❛ I do not know. I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and name and count out the grains that make me what I am. ❜ ❨474❩ ❛ I ride rough waters, and shall sink with no one to save me. ❜ ❨475❩ ❛ I am above the earth now. I am no longer upright, to be knocked against and damaged. ❜ ❨476❩ ❛ I see it all. I feel it all. ❜ ❨477❩ ❛ Death is woven in with the violets. Death and again death. ❜ ❨478❩ ❛ We have been walking for hours it seems. But where? I cannot remember. ❜ ❨479❩ ❛ If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged. ❜ ❨480❩ ❛ When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass. ❜ ❨481❩ ❛ Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word; - musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase.  ❜ ❨482❩ ❛ Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself: Murderess, murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor. ❜ ❨483❩ ❛ If the world treats you well, you come to believe you are deserving of it. ❜ ❨484❩ ❛ If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go. ❜ ❨485❩ ❛ It’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength. ❜ ❨486❩ ❛ There is no fool like an educated fool. ❜ ❨487❩ ❛ There are many dangerous things that may take place in a bed. ❜ ❨488❩ ❛ I am afraid of falling into hopeless despair, over my wasted life, and I am still not sure how it happened. ❜ ❨489❩ ❛ Underneath it all is another feeling, a feeling of being wide-eyed awake and watchful. ❜ ❨490❩ ❛ And underneath all that is another feeling still, a feeling like being torn open; not like a body of flesh, it is not painful as such, but like a peach; and not even torn open, but ripe and splitting open of its own accord.  ❜ ❨491❩ ❛ The small details of life often hide a great significance. ❜ ❨492❩ ❛ Guilt comes to you not from the things you've done, but from the things that others have done to you. ❜ ❨493❩ ❛ I wonder, how can I be all of these different things at once? ❜ ❨494❩ ❛ It is always a mistake to curse back openly at those who are stronger than you unless there is a fence between. ❜ ❨495❩ ❛ Some call this "Eve's curse," but I think that is stupid because the real curse of Eve was having to put up with the nonsense of Adam. ❜ ❨496❩ ❛ I don't know why they are all so eager to be remembered. What good will it do them? There are some things that should be forgotten by everyone, and never spoken of again. ❜ ❨497❩ ❛ I would never blame a human creature for feeling lonely. ❜ ❨498❩ ❛ If they want a monster so badly they ought to be provided by one. ❜ ❨499❩ ❛ It’s as if I never existed, because no trace of me remains, I have left no marks. And that way I cannot be followed. It is almost the same as being innocent. ❜ ❨500❩ ❛ Today you wear your habitual expression of strained anxiety; you smell of violets. ❜ ❨501❩ ❛ Of course you have always been an idealist, and filled with your optimistic dreams; but reality must at some time obtrude. ❜ ❨502❩ ❛ I wonder what would become of me, and comfort myself that in a hundred years I will be dead and at peace. ❜ ❨503❩ ❛ For it is not always the one that strikes the blow that is the actual murderer. ❜ ❨504❩ ❛ There is a “do this” or “do that” with God, but not any “because”. ❜ ❨505❩ ❛ If you have a need and they find it out, they will use it against you. The best way is to stop from wanting anything. ❜ ❨506❩ ❛ They say, why don’t you ever smile or laugh, we never see you smiling, and I say I suppose I have gotten out of the way of it, my face won’t bend in that direction any more. ❜ ❨507❩ ❛ I was shut up inside that doll of myself, and my true voice could not get out. ❜ ❨508❩ ❛ I see what you’re after. You are a collector. You think all you have to do is give me an apple, and then you can collect me. ❜ ❨509❩ ❛ If you want to be an asshole, it's a free country. Millions before you have made the same life choice. ❜ ❨510❩ ❛ Then there's the future. Sheer vertigo. ❜ ❨511❩ ❛ Nature is to zoos as God is to churches. ❜ ❨512❩ ❛ After everything that's happened, how can the world still be so beautiful? ❜ ❨513❩ ❛ There's something to be said for hunger: at least it lets you know you're still alive. ❜ ❨514❩ ❛ These things sneak up on me for no reason, these flashes of irrational happiness. It's probably a vitamin deficiency. ❜ ❨515❩ ❛ Toast cannot be explained by any rational means. Toast is me. I am toast. ❜ ❨516❩ ❛ You can’t buy it, but it has a price. Everything has a price. ❜ ❨517❩ ❛ As a species were doomed by hope, then? You could call it hope. That, or desperation. ❜ ❨518❩ ❛ I am not my childhood. ❜ ❨519❩ ❛ Human beings hope they can stick their souls into someone else and live on forever. ❜ ❨520❩ ❛ “I'll make you mine”, lovers said in old books. They never said, “I'll make you me.” ❜ ❨521❩ ❛ How much is too much, how far is too far? ❜ ❨522❩ ❛ Expectation isn't the same as desire. ❜ ❨523❩ ❛ Why not cut to the chase? ❜ ❨524❩ ❛ Maybe there aren't any solutions. Human society, corpses and rubble. ❜ ❨525❩ ❛ I thought you didn’t believe in God. ❜ ❨526❩ ❛ I need at least the illusion of being understood. ❜ ❨527❩ ❛ What change would have altered the course of events? In the big picture, nothing. In the small picture, so much. ❜ ❨528❩ ❛ You are only looking at the dirt under your feet. It's not good for you. ❜ ❨529❩ ❛ I like to keep only the bright side of myself turned towards you.  ❜ ❨530❩ ❛ Grief in the face of inevitable death. The wish to stop time. The human condition. ❜ ❨531❩ ❛ So many crucial events take place behind people’s backs, when they aren’t in a position to watch: birth and death, for instance. ❜ ❨532❩ ❛ Would you kill someone you loved to spare them pain? ❜ ❨533❩ ❛ When the water’s moving faster than the boat, you can’t control a thing. ❜ ❨534❩ ❛ Don't be so fucking sentimental. ❜ ❨535❩ ❛ Wrong, as usual. ❜ ❨536❩ ❛ Why do you want to talk about ugly things? ❜ ❨537❩ ❛ I understand why serial killers send helpful clues to the police. ❜ ❨538❩ ❛ Take your time, leave mine alone. ❜ ❨539❩ ❛ You will hear thunder and remember me. ❜ ❨540❩ ❛ If you were music, I would listen to you ceaselessly. ❜ ❨541❩ ❛ I seem to myself an accidental guest in this dreadful body. ❜ ❨542❩ ❛ Call me a sinner, mock me maliciously. ❜ ❨543❩ ❛ I, from the very beginning, seemed to myself like someone's dream or delirium. Or a reflection in someone else's mirror. Without flesh, without meaning, without a name. ❜ ❨544❩ ❛ I knew the list of crimes that I was destined to commit. ❜ ❨545❩ ❛ The future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future. ❜ ❨546❩ ❛ You are untranslatable into any one tongue. ❜ ❨547❩ ❛ I was hoping my silence would fit yours. ❜ ❨548❩ ❛ See, we were never about butterflies. All about us is unearthly and radiant. ❜ ❨549❩ ❛ You do not know just what you've been forgiven. ❜ ❨550❩ ❛ I need to slaughter my memory.  ❜ ❨551❩ ❛ Forgive me that I appeared to you in waking dreams. ❜ ❨552❩ ❛ I will condemn, I will forget, I will give comfort to the enemy. ❜ ❨553❩ ❛ I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death. ❜ ❨554❩ ❛ Wild honey smells of freedom. But gold smells of nothing. ❜ ❨555❩ ❛ You are three times more beautiful than angels. ❜ ❨556❩ ❛ I will kill you without spilling your blood on the ground, not touching you with my hand, not giving you one glance. ❜ ❨557❩ ❛ You invented me. There is no such earthly being. ❜ ❨558❩ ❛ You’re late. Way too late. I’m glad to see you, nonetheless. ❜ ❨559❩ ❛ Forgive me that I felt forsaken. Forgive me that I kept mistaking too many others for you. ❜ ❨560❩ ❛ Real tenderness can’t be confused, it’s quiet and can’t be heard. ❜ ❨561❩ ❛ What else lived in that house besides us? ❜ ❨562❩ ❛ How unhappy we are together! ❜ ❨563❩ ❛ I defend not my voice, but my silence. ❜ ❨564❩ ❛ Without love, I'm more at ease, I'm sure. ❜ ❨565❩ ❛ I've got no more tears or explanations. ❜ ❨566❩ ❛ I’m not complaining. Happiness is not for me. ❜ ❨567❩ ❛ Are you not the only tie between good and evil, earthly pits and paradise? ❜ ❨568❩ ❛ In the morning we shall find out who has died in the night. ❜ ❨569❩ ❛ I was not a lovable child, and I've grown into a deeply unlovable adult. ❜ ❨570❩ ❛ The truly frightening flaw in humanity is our capacity for cruelty - we all have it. ❜ ❨571❩ ❛ I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark. ❜ ❨572❩ ❛ I am not angry or sad or happy to see you. I could not give a shit. You don't even ripple. ❜ ❨573❩ ❛ I was raised feral, and I mostly stayed that way. ❜ ❨574❩ ❛ I can feel a better version of me somewhere in there - hidden behind a liver or attached to a bit of spleen. But the meanness usually wins out. ❜ ❨575❩ ❛ I felt something loosen in me, that shouldn't have loosened. A stitch come undone. ❜ ❨576❩ ❛ Everyone who keeps a secret, itches to tell it. ❜ ❨577❩ ❛ Coffee goes great with sudden death. ❜ ❨578❩ ❛ I should just listen to my gut and then do the opposite. ❜ ❨579❩ ❛ “Smile, it can't be that bad!” Yeah, actually, it can, jackwad. ❜ ❨580❩ ❛ Everything bad in the world already did happen. ❜ ❨581❩ ❛ You’re going to find peace? Like knowing is somehow going to fix you? ❜ ❨582❩ ❛ Instead of asking yourself what happened, just accept that it happened. ❜ ❨583❩ ❛ Homesick for a place I've never been. ❜ ❨584❩ ❛ Worries find you easily enough without inviting them. ❜ ❨585❩ ❛ It is always consoling to think of suicide. It's what gets one through many a bad night. ❜ ❨586❩ ❛ Do you understand this is serious? ❜ ❨587❩ ❛ Sometimes it feels good to fuck with something. Instead of always being fucked with. ❜ ❨588❩ ❛ How could you kill something you cared enough to name? ❜ ❨589❩ ❛ Draw a picture of my soul, and it’d be a scribble with fangs. ❜ ❨590❩ ❛ We have the same chemicals in our blood: shame, anger, greed. Unjustified nostalgia. ❜ ❨591❩ ❛ I appreciate a straightforward apology the way a tone-deaf person enjoys a fine piece of music. ❜ ❨592❩ ❛ The phrase fuck you may not rest on the tip of my tongue, but it’s near. Midtongue. ❜ ❨593❩ ❛ Nothing to it but to do it. ❜ ❨594❩ ❛ There are a lot of people who deserve a lesson, deserve to really understand, that nothing comes easy, that most things are going to go sour. ❜ ❨595❩ ❛ If ifs and buts were candies and nuts we’d all have a very Merry Christmas. ❜ ❨596❩ ❛ Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. ❜ ❨597❩ ❛ What does it do to a girl who knows her mother is a murderer? ❜ ❨598❩ ❛ That mean old bitch across the street bit it. ❜ ❨599❩ ❛ Survival is a talent. ❜ ❨600❩ ❛ Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever. ❜ ❨601❩ ❛ Who has the courage to burn themselves? ❜ ❨602❩ ❛ Is insanity just a matter of dropping the act? ❜ ❨603❩ ❛ Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? ❜ ❨604❩ ❛ You need to be well fed, clothed, and housed to have time for this much self-pity. ❜ ❨605❩ ❛ When I am supposed to be awake, I am asleep; when I am supposed to speak, I am silent. When a pleasure offers itself to me, I avoid it. ❜ ❨606❩ ❛ There is thought, and then there is thinking about thoughts, and they don't feel the same. ❜ ❨607❩ ❛ In a strange way we are free. We've reached the end of the line. We have nothing more to lose. ❜ ❨608❩ ❛ The world won’t stop because we aren’t in it anymore. ❜ ❨609❩ ❛ I can't answer the real question. All I can tell you is, it's easy. ❜ ❨610❩ ❛ I am lighter, airier than I’ve been in years. ❜ ❨611❩ ❛ I am not dead, yet something in me definitely is. ❜ ❨612❩ ❛ You meant that as an insult but I am taking it as a compliment. ❜ ❨613❩ ❛ What life can recover from that? ❜ ❨614❩ ❛ It's a fairly accurate portrait of me. It's accurate but it isn't profound. ❜ ❨615❩ ❛ Pull yourself together! There's nothing wrong with you. ❜ ❨616❩ ❛ It's quiet. It's like― I don't know. It's like falling off a cliff. ❜ ❨617❩ ❛ Once you start parsing a face, it's a peculiar item: squishy, pointy, with lots of air vents and wet spots. ❜ ❨618❩ ❛ I lost him. I did it on purpose. ❜ ❨619❩ ❛ It’s a mean world. There’s nobody to take care of you out there. ❜ ❨620❩ ❛ Reality is getting too dense. ❜ ❨621❩ ❛ I'm ambivalent. In fact that's my new favourite word. ❜ ❨622❩ ❛ I can't come up with reassuring answers to the terrible questions you raise. ❜ ❨623❩ ❛ A spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of warm earth. Suicide weather. ❜ ❨624❩ ❛ Twenty-five chocolate chip cookies would be the perfect dinner. ❜ ❨625❩ ❛ A thought is a hard thing to control. ❜ ❨626❩ ❛ Life demands skills I don’t have. ❜ ❨627❩ ❛ Light like this does not exist, but we wish it did. We wish the sun could make us young and beautiful. Most of all, we wish that everyone we knew could be brightened simply by our looking at them. ❜ ❨628❩ ❛ It never stops, even at night, it’s my lullaby. ❜ ❨629❩ ❛ Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. ❜ ❨630❩ ❛ This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes. ❜ ❨631❩ ❛ I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. ❜ ❨632❩ ❛ Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. ❜ ❨633❩ ❛ Hatred is easier. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love. ❜ ❨634❩ ❛ Potential has a shelf life. ❜ ❨635❩ ❛ Don’t move. Stay like that, let me have that. ❜ ❨636❩ ❛ I have come to the edge, of the land. I could get pushed over. ❜ ❨637❩ ❛ Never pray for justice, because you might get some. ❜ ❨638❩ ❛ It disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional. ❜ ❨639❩ ❛ We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something. ❜ ❨640❩ ❛ This is what I miss, not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. ❜ ❨641❩ ❛ I am not good. I know too much to be good. I know myself. I know myself to be vengeful, greedy, secretive and sly. ❜ ❨642❩ ❛ You are amazing. Amazing and agonising and almost lethal. ❜ ❨643❩ ❛ In my dreams of this city I am always lost. ❜ ❨644❩ ❛ I don't know where these feelings have come from, I don’t know what I've done. ❜ ❨645❩ ❛ I am not the centre of your story, you are.  ❜ ❨646❩ ❛ I’m mad because you’re an asshole. ❜ ❨647❩ ❛ It's enormously pleasing to me, walking away. It's like being able to make people appear and vanish, at will. ❜ ❨648❩ ❛ There is never only one of anyone. ❜ ❨649❩ ❛ I can't do this without feeling I'm acting. ❜ ❨650❩ ❛ I am prepared for almost anything; except absence, except silence. ❜ ❨651❩ ❛ I’m losing my appetite for strangers. ❜ ❨652❩ ❛ You wear your cravings on the outside, like the suckers on a squid. You want it all. ❜ ❨653❩ ❛ Knowing too much about other people weakens you. You are forced to understand their reasons for doing things. ❜ ❨654❩ ❛ I have lost confidence: perhaps all I will ever be is what I am now. ❜ ❨655❩ ❛ Echoes of light, shining out of the midst of nothing. It's old light, and there's not much of it. But it's enough to see by. ❜ ❨656❩ ❛ Whoever cares the most will lose. ❜ ❨657❩ ❛ Young women need unfairness, it’s one of their few defences.  ❜ ❨658❩ ❛ Time has gone on without you. ❜ ❨659❩ ❛ Don't let the bastards grind you down. ❜ ❨660❩ ❛ Who can remember pain, once it’s over? Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind. ❜ ❨661❩ ❛ Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse, for some. ❜ ❨662❩ ❛ There is more than one kind of freedom. Freedom to and freedom from. ❜ ❨663❩ ❛ Remember that forgiveness too is a power. ❜ ❨664❩ ❛ I am not your justification for existence. ❜ ❨665❩ ❛ I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. ❜ ❨666❩ ❛ If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending. ❜ ❨667❩ ❛ All you have to do is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard. ❜ ❨668❩ ❛ Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations. ❜ ❨669❩ ❛ I want everything back, the way it was. ❜ ❨670❩ ❛ You can't help what you feel, but you can help how you behave. ❜ ❨671❩ ❛ Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it. ❜ ❨672❩ ❛ To want is to have a weakness. ❜ ❨673❩ ❛ There isn't even an enemy you could put your finger on. ❜ ❨674❩ ❛ The past is a great darkness, filled with echoes. ❜ ❨675❩ ❛ Ordinary is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary. ❜ ❨676❩ ❛ I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilised. I wish it showed me in a better light. ❜ ❨677❩ ❛ The night is mine, my own time, to do with it as I will, as long as I am quiet. As long as I don't move. As long as I lie still. ❜ ❨678❩ ❛ By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you. ❜ ❨679❩ ❛ Whatever is silenced will clamour to be heard. ❜ ❨680❩ ❛ Don't worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important things. ❜ ❨681❩ ❛ Keep the others safe. Don't let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. ❜ ❨682❩ ❛ The body is so easily damaged, so easily disposed of, water and chemicals is all it is, hardly more to it than a jellyfish, drying on sand. ❜ ❨683❩ ❛ The world is full of weapons if you're looking for them. ❜ ❨684❩ ❛ Nobody's heart is perfect. ❜ ❨685❩ ❛ One false move and I'm dead. ❜ ❨686❩ ❛ Watch out. I've got my eye on you. ❜ ❨687❩ ❛ Fear is a powerful stimulant. ❜ ❨688❩ ❛ I couldn't afford to lose you. ❜ ❨689❩ ❛ Name one hero who was happy. ---- You can’t. ❜ ❨690❩ ❛ I feel like I could eat the world raw. ❜ ❨691❩ ❛ We are like gods at the dawning of the world. ❜ ❨692❩ ❛ I could recognise him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world. ❜ ❨693❩ ❛ There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw. ❜ ❨694❩ ❛ You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature. ❜ ❨695❩ ❛ He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. ❜ ❨696❩ ❛ Some men gain glory after they die, others fade. ❜ ❨697❩ ❛ I am made of memories. ❜ ❨698❩ ❛ Will you come with me? ❜ ❨699❩ ❛ I wish I had let you all die. ❜ ❨700❩ ❛ It is right to seek peace for the dead. You and I both know there is no peace for those who live after. ❜ ❨701❩ ❛ Bury us. Let us be free. ❜ ❨702❩ ❛ Go. He waits for you. ❜ ❨703❩ ❛ Nothing could eclipse the stain of this dirty, mortal mediocrity. ❜ ❨704❩ ❛ I know I have told you of this. ❜ ❨705❩ ❛ I don't know how you remember them all. I swear they look the same to me. ❜ ❨706❩ ❛ Perhaps you should get some new stories, so I don’t fucking kill myself of boredom. ❜ ❨707❩ ❛ I yearn for the darkness and silence of the underworld, where I can rest. ❜ ❨708❩ ❛ There is no honour in betraying your friends. ❜ ❨709❩ ❛ There is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong. ❜ ❨710❩ ❛ Divine blood flows differently. ❜ ❨711❩ ❛ How is there glory in taking life? We die so easily. ❜ ❨712❩ ❛ This is what I will miss, I think. I will kill myself rather than miss it. ❜ ❨713❩ ❛ How long do we have? ❜ ❨714❩ ❛ Do you think we fight hopeless wars? ❜ ❨715❩ ❛ There is no law that gods must be fair. ❜ ❨716❩ ❛ I do not fear ridicule. I never have. ❜ ❨717❩ ❛ You were always better with words than I. ❜ ❨718❩ ❛ Who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty? ❜ ❨719❩ ❛ When you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. ❜ ❨720❩ ❛ That's how the madness of the world tries to colonise you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality. ❜ ❨721❩ ❛ The shadows of the abyss are like the petals of a monstrous flower that shall blossom within the skull and expand the mind beyond what any man can bear. ❜ ❨722❩ ❛ Silence creates violence. ❜ ❨723❩ ❛ Some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough. ❜ ❨724❩ ❛ There are certain kinds of connections that are so deep that when broken you feel the snap of it inside you. ❜ ❨725❩ ❛ Nothing that ever lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth. ❜ ❨726❩ ❛ We all live in a kind of continuous dream. ❜ ❨727❩ ❛ You can either waste time worrying about a death that might not come or concentrate on what’s left to you. ❜ ❨728❩ ❛ What can you do when your five senses are not enough? ❜ ❨729❩ ❛ We will neither be what we had been nor what we would become once we reach our destination. ❜ ❨730❩ ❛ Perhaps my only real expertise, my only talent, is to endure beyond the endurable. ❜ ❨731❩ ❛ When you are too close to the centre of a mystery there is no way to pull back. ❜ ❨732❩ ❛ I long ago stopped believing in promises. Biological imperatives, yes. Environmental factors, yes. Promises, no. ❜ ❨733❩ ❛ I look not for shooting stars but for fixed ones, and I try to imagine what kind of life lives in those celestial tidal pools so far from us. ❜ ❨734❩ ❛ I hesitated for just a moment. Some part of me wanted to see the creature, I think. If so, it was a very small part. I ran. ❜ ❨735❩ ❛ I don’t require any of this to have a deeper meaning. ❜ ❨736❩ ❛ All of this speculation is incomplete, inexact, inaccurate, useless. ❜ ❨737❩ ❛ We don’t have real answers, because we still don’t know what questions to ask. Our instruments are useless, our methodology broken, our motivations selfish. ❜ ❨738❩ ❛ This part I will do alone. Don’t follow. ❜ ❨739❩ ❛ People my entire life have told me I am too much in control, but that has never been the case. I have never truly been in control. ❜ ❨740❩ ❛ Has there always been someone like me to bury the bodies, to have regrets, to carry on after everyone else was dead? ❜ ❨741❩ ❛ I loved them, but I didn’t need them, and I thought that was the way it was supposed to be. ❜ ❨742❩ ❛ Places can impress themselves upon me, and I can become part of them with ease. ❜ ❨743❩ ❛ There is no one with me. I am all by myself. ❜ ❨744❩ ❛ Pretending often leads to becoming a reasonable facsimile of what you mimic. ❜ ❨745❩ ❛ I think you're confusing suicide with self-destruction, and they're very different. Almost none of us commit suicide, whereas almost all of us self-destruct. ❜ ❨746❩ ❛ What did you eat? You had rations for only two weeks. You were there for nearly four months. ❜ ❨747❩ ❛ Something here is making giant waves in the gene pool. ❜ ❨748❩ ❛ I need to know what’s inside. ❜ ❨749❩ ❛ These aren't decisions. They're impulses ❜ ❨750❩ ❛ What do you think I do when you’re away? Do you think I’m out in the garden pinning, looking up at the sky? ❜ ❨751❩ ❛ If I know what’s happened I can save their life. ❜ ❨752❩ ❛ They either went crazy or something in here killed them. ❜ ❨753❩ ❛ Something is coming through the fence! ❜ ❨754❩ ❛ Nothing is written in the stars. Not these stars, nor any others. No one controls your destiny. ❜ ❨755❩ ❛ People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us. ❜ ❨756❩ ❛ Happy endings are still endings. ❜ ❨757❩ ❛ We believe in all sorts of things that aren't true; -- we call it history. ❜ ❨758❩ ❛ Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil? ❜ ❨759❩ ❛ In the lives of children, pumpkins turn into coaches, mice and rats turn into men. When we grow up, we realise it is far more common for men to turn into rats. ❜ ❨760❩ ❛ Girls need cold anger. They need the cold simmer, the ceaseless grudge, the talent to avoid forgiveness, the side stepping of compromise.  ❜ ❨761❩ ❛ Love makes hunters of us all. ❜ ❨762❩ ❛ There is much to hate in this world and way too much to love. ❜ ❨763❩ ❛ You confuse not speaking with not listening. ❜ ❨764❩ ❛ As long as people are going to call you a lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention. ❜ ❨765❩ ❛ The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say. ❜ ❨766❩ ❛ Not everyone is born a witch or a saint. Not everyone is born talented, or crooked, or blessed; some are born definite in no particular at all. ❜ ❨767❩ ❛ We are a fountain of shimmering contradictions, most of us. ❜ ❨768❩ ❛ The wickedness of men is that their power breeds stupidity and blindness. ❜ ❨769❩ ❛ I know you don't want to hear this but someone has to say it! You are out of control! ❜ ❨770❩ ❛ Even at the very worst - there is always choice. ❜ ❨771❩ ❛ Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven. So you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of belonging is worth it. ❜ ❨772❩ ❛ Cross a man and you struggle, one of you wins, you adjust and go on -- or you lie there dead. Cross a woman and the entire universe is changed. ❜ ❨773❩ ❛ That was such a wonderful time, even in its strangeness and sadness. Life isn't the same now. It's wonderful, but it isn't the same. ❜ ❨774❩ ❛ I don't care for approval, and I don't mind doing without. ❜ ❨775❩ ❛ It's where I live. A permanent state of bereavement. This is nothing new. ❜ ❨776❩ ❛ Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Always the godfather, never the god. ❜ ❨777❩ ❛ The world unwraps itself to you, again and again as soon as you are ready to see it anew. ❜ ❨778❩ ❛ Evil is an act, not an appetite. Everyone has the appetite. If you give in to it, that act is evil. The appetite is normal. ❜ ❨779❩ ❛ How many haven't wanted to slash the throat of some boor across the dining room table?  ❜ ❨780❩ ❛ Even God used silence as a strategy. ❜ ❨781❩ ❛ I learned failure early and mastered it. ❜ ❨782❩ ❛ It isn't whether you do it well or ill, it's that you do it all. ❜ ❨783❩ ❛ This is why you shouldn't fall in love, it blinds you. Love is a very wicked distraction. ❜ ❨784❩ ❛ Wisdom is not the understanding of mystery. Wisdom is accepting that mystery is beyond understanding. That's what makes it mystery. ❜ ❨785❩ ❛ Wrong takes an awful long time to be proven, in my experience. ❜ ❨786❩ ❛ Such brightness, as you know, decays brilliantly. ❜ ❨787❩ ❛ I take responsibility only for the future, not the past. The past can't hurt you the way the future can. ❜ ❨788❩ ❛ Tell me to mind my own business, tell me to go fuck myself, to piss off, go on, say it, but don’t tell me nothing’s wrong. ❜ ❨789❩ ❛ The truth isn't a thing of fact or reason. It is simply what everyone agrees on. ❜ ❨790❩ ❛ One can't make peace with another by force. ❜ ❨791❩ ❛ I am a forgettable leaf on a tree. ❜ ❨792❩ ❛ That's all I want; --- to do no harm. ❜ ❨793❩ ❛ I only believe in the opposite of luck, whatever that is. ❜ ❨794❩ ❛ Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves. ❜ ❨795❩ ❛ You’re too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and thanks to that we manage to endure the burden of the past. ❜ ❨796❩ ❛ Love, no matter what else it might be, is a natural talent. You are either born knowing how, or you never know. ❜ ❨797❩ ❛ Whatever you do, you will be sorry all the rest of your life. ❜ ❨798❩ ❛ There is no God worth worrying about. ❜ ❨799❩ ❛ The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love. ❜ ❨800❩ ❛ Wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good. ❜ ❨801❩ ❛ Think of love as a state of grace, not the means to anything, but the very end in itself. ❜ ❨802❩ ❛ Only God knows how much I love you. ❜ ❨803❩ ❛ There is no greater glory than to die for love. ❜ ❨804❩ ❛ Nothing resembles a person as much as the way he dies. ❜ ❨805❩ ❛ Take advantage of it now, while you are young, and suffer all you can, because these things don't last your whole life. ❜ ❨806❩ ❛ Today, when I saw you, I realised that what is between us is nothing more than an illusion. ❜ ❨807❩ ❛ I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century. ❜ ❨808❩ ❛ I want to be myself again, to recover all that I was obliged to give up. ❜ ❨809❩ ❛ The only thing worse than bad health is a bad name. ❜ ❨810❩ ❛ This soup tastes like windows. ❜ ❨811❩ ❛ Why do you insist on talking about what does not exist? ❜ ❨812❩ ❛ One has to live a long time to know a man's true nature. ❜ ❨813❩ ❛ No, not rich, I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing. ❜ ❨814❩ ❛ My heart has more rooms than a whorehouse. ❜ ❨815❩ ❛ That may be the reason he does so many things, so that he will not have to think. ❜ ❨816❩ ❛ Love if it exists, is something separate: another life. ❜ ❨817❩ ❛ Things did not go as badly for me as they would for you. ❜ ❨818❩ ❛ There are things you do only for love. ❜ ❨819❩ ❛ I’ll have plenty of time to rest when I die. ❜ ❨820❩ ❛ There is no innocence more dangerous than the innocence of age. ❜ ❨821❩ ❛ You treat me as if I were just anybody. ❜ ❨822❩ ❛ The symptoms of love are the same as those of cholera. ❜ ❨823❩ ❛ There is no law, human or divine, that you have not ignored. ❜ ❨824❩ ❛ Why is it that I feel I've known you so many years? ❜ ❨825❩ ❛ Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. ❜ ❨826❩ ❛ It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. ❜ ❨827❩ ❛ We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real? ❜ ❨828❩ ❛ There must be something, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing. ❜ ❨829❩ ❛ If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn. ❜ ❨830❩ ❛ If you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore. ❜ ❨831❩ ❛ You can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. ❜ ❨832❩ ❛ It was a pleasure to burn. ❜ ❨833❩ ❛ I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? ❜ ❨834❩ ❛ Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? ❜ ❨835❩ ❛ Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays? ❜ ❨836❩ ❛ Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? ❜ ❨837❩ ❛ I don't talk things. I talk the meaning of things. ❜ ❨838❩ ❛ I'll hold on to the world tight some day. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning. ❜ ❨839❩ ❛ I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough it'll make sense. ❜ ❨840❩ ❛ That's the good part of dying; when you've nothing to lose, you run any risk you want. ❜ ❨841❩ ❛ Someday we'll build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in it and cover it up. ❜ ❨842❩ ❛ You're not like the others. I've seen a few; I know. When I talk, you look at me. ❜ ❨843❩ ❛ You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by. ❜ ❨844❩ ❛ When they give you lined paper, write the other way. ❜ ❨845❩ ❛ The sun burnt every day. It burnt time. ❜ ❨846❩ ❛ We have everything we need to be happy but we aren't happy. Something is missing. ❜ ❨847❩ ❛ I feel I'm doing what I should've done a lifetime ago. ❜ ❨848❩ ❛ I'm not afraid. Maybe it's because I'm doing the right thing at last. Maybe it's because I've done a rash thing and don't want to look the coward to you. ❜ ❨849❩ ❛ Good God, who were those men? I never saw them before in my life! ❜ ❨850❩ ❛ How do you get so empty? Who takes it out of you? ❜ ❨851❩ ❛ It must be right. It seems so right. ❜ ❨852❩ ❛ To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. ❜ ❨853❩ ❛ It's my game. And no one can help me. Not even you. ❜ ❨854❩ ❛ What makes earth feel like hell is our expectation that it should feel like heaven. Earth is earth. Dead is dead. You’ll find out for yourself soon enough. ❜ ❨855❩ ❛ Death is a long process. Your body is just the first part of you that croaks. Beyond that, your dreams have to die. Then your expectations. Your anger and memories must die. Your ego. Your pride and shame and ambition and hope. ❜ ❨856❩ ❛ Help me give up my addiction to hope. ❜ ❨857❩ ❛ Life is short, death is forever. ❜ ❨858❩ ❛ Hope is something really tough and tenacious you have to give up. It’s an addiction to break. ❜ ❨859❩ ❛ If the living are haunted by the dead, then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes. ❜ ❨860❩ ❛ We all wish to be pursued. We all long to be desired. ❜ ❨861❩ ❛ All the demons of hell formerly reigned as gods in previous cultures. No it's not fair, but one man's god is another man's devil. ❜ ❨862❩ ❛ I can become someone else, not out of pressure and desperation, but merely because a new life sounds fun or interesting or joyful. ❜ ❨863❩ ❛ It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities. ❜ ❨864❩ ❛ You fucked up. Game over. So just relax. ❜ ❨865❩ ❛ The greatest weapon any warrior can carry into battle is absolute certainty of her eternal soul. ❜ ❨866❩ ❛ If killing you will end my existence as well, be it. Small loss. Such a life, as your puppet, is not worth living. ❜ ❨867❩ ❛ I might be a touch of a sadist and a little bit jejune but at least I'm not a victim, not any longer. I hope. ❜ ❨868❩ ❛ Dying seems like the greatest weakness, and in a world where people say you're lazy for not shaving your legs, then being dead seems like the ultimate character flaw. ❜ ❨869❩ ❛ Any concept of right versus wrong, is merely a cultural construct relative to one specific time and place. ❜ ❨870❩ ❛ To prove that I exist I must kill you. ❜ ❨871❩ ❛ I'd say that my life has been a way-too-long case history of chasing rainbows. ❜ ❨872❩ ❛ The world is a battle for attention, a war to be heard. ❜ ❨873❩ ❛ Every garden looks beautiful in May. ❜ ❨874❩ ❛ When we neglect to fear such brittle monstrosity, we render it powerless. ❜ ❨875❩ ❛ My taste for power continues to grow, as does my ability to accrue it. ❜ ❨876❩ ❛ Such language! Why don't you just take a dump in my ears? ❜ ❨877❩ ❛ You’d be foolish to count on people displaying high standards of honesty. ❜ ❨878❩ ❛ Depending on her mood, she can be more frightening than any demon or devil you might ever run across. ❜ ❨879❩ ❛ Cross your fingers! Maybe death won't happen to you. ❜ ❨880❩ ❛ Do not die while wearing cheap shoes. ❜ ❨881❩ ❛ Old habits die hard. ❜ ❨882❩ ❛ It's our attachments to a fixed identity that torture us. ❜ ❨883❩ ❛ What do I think I am? In a thousand words; I don't have a clue. ❨884❩ ❛ If I am to be saved it is because your love redeems me. ❜ ❨885❩ ❛ All I wanted was to be loved for myself. ❜ ❨886❩ ❛ I have tasted all the happiness the world can offer. ❜ ❨887❩ ❛ Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? ❜ ❨888❩ ❛ You have a heart that can hold the entire empire of the world. ❜ ❨889❩ ❛ Look, I am not laughing now, crying, crying for you. ❜ ❨890❩ ❛ Tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead. ❜ ❨891❩ ❛ You are afraid of me! And yet I am not really wicked. Love me and you shall see! ❜ ❨892❩ ❛ Are people so unhappy when they love? --- Yes, when they love and are not sure of being loved. ❜ ❨893❩ ❛ Your soul is a beautiful thing. No emperor received so fair a gift. The angels wept tonight. ❜ ❨894❩ ❛ Blood!...Blood!... That's a good thing! ❜ ❨895❩ ❛ Now I want to live like everybody else. I want to have a life like everybody else. ❜ ❨896❩ ❛ You will be the happiest of women. And we will sing, all by ourselves, till we swoon away with delight. ❜ ❨897❩ ❛ I should be as gentle as a lamb; and you could do anything with me that you pleased. ❜ ❨898❩ ❛ I am going to die of love, I am dying of love. That's how it is. I loved you so. I still love you so. ❜ ❨899❩ ❛ I am dying of love for her, I tell you! If only you knew how beautiful she was when she let me kiss her. ❜ ❨900❩ ❛ He fills me with horror but I do not hate him. How can I hate him? ❜ ❨901❩ ❛ Holy angel, in Heaven blessed, my spirit longs with thee to rest. ❜ ❨902❩ ❛ Nothing is colder or more dead than my heart. ❜ ❨903❩ ❛ I had loved an angel and now I despise a woman. ❜ ❨904❩ ❛ Our lives are one masked ball. ❜ ❨905❩ ❛ Why do you condemn a man whom you have never met, whom no one knows and about whom even you yourself know nothing? ❜ ❨906❩ ❛ He would commit murder for me. ❜ ❨907❩ ❛ If I don't save her from the hands of that humbug, she is lost. But I shall save her. ❜ ❨908❩ ❛ We will go from here together or die together. ❜ ❨909❩ ❛ Your fear, your terror, all of that is just love and love of the most exquisite kind, the kind which people do not admit even to themselves. The kind that gives you a thrill, when you think of it. ❜ ❨910❩ ❛ Destiny has chained you to me forever. ❜ ❨911❩ ❛ You must never ask me that. ❜ ❨912❩ ❛ Are you afraid that you will change your mind? ❜ ❨913❩ ❛ You must come and fetch me in my dressing room at midnight exactly. ❜ ❨914❩ ❛ The holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mould yourself through the gaps. ❜ ❨915❩ ❛ I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts. ❜ ❨916❩ ❛ There’s something comforting about the sight of strangers safe at home. ❜ ❨917❩ ❛ I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head. ❜ ❨918❩ ❛ It’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to even mourn for it. ❜ ❨919❩ ❛ There’s nothing so painful, so corrosive, as suspicion. ❜ ❨920❩ ❛ When did you become so weak? ❜ ❨921❩ ❛ I don’t know where that strength went, I don’t remember losing it. I think that over time it got chipped away, bit by bit, by life, by the living of it. ❜ ❨922❩ ❛ Let’s be honest: women are still only really valued for two things—their looks and their role as mothers. ❜ ❨923❩ ❛ Sadness gets boring after a while, for the sad person and for everyone around them. ❜ ❨924❩ ❛ I’m playing at real life instead of actually living it. ❜ ❨925❩ ❛ I’ve just got to let myself feel the pain, because if I don’t, if I keep numbing it, it’ll never really go away. ❜ ❨926❩ ❛ I am not the girl I used to be. I am no longer desirable, I’m off-putting in some way. It’s as if people can see the damage written all over me, can see it in my face, the way I hold myself, the way I move. ❜ ❨927❩ ❛ Who was it that said following your heart is a good thing? It is pure egotism, a selfishness to conquer all. ❜ ❨928❩ ❛ It’s impossible to resist the kindness of strangers. ❜ ❨929❩ ❛ Sometimes I catch myself trying to remember the last time I had meaningful physical contact with another person, just a hug or a heartfelt squeeze of my hand, and my heart twitches. ❜ ❨930❩ ❛ I have to find a way of making myself happy, I have to stop looking for happiness elsewhere. ❜ ❨931❩ ❛ How did I find myself here? I wonder where it started, my decline; I wonder at what point I could have halted it. Where did I take the wrong turn? ❜ ❨932❩ ❛ Now look -- Now look what you made me do. ❜ ❨933❩ ❛ It’s okay, whatever you did, whatever you’ve done: you suffered, you hurt, you deserve forgiveness. ❜ ❨934❩ ❛ They’re what I lost, they’re everything I want to be. ❜ ❨935❩ ❛ You broke me and I broke us. ❜ ❨936❩ ❛ I’ve been the fool. If he does it with you, he’ll do it to you. ❜ ❨937❩ ❛ I’d never realised, not until now, how shameful it is to be pitied. ❜ ❨938❩ ❛ Sometimes, I don’t want to go anywhere, I think I’ll be happy if I never have to set foot outside the house again. ❜ ❨939❩ ❛ I don’t believe in soul mates, but there’s an understanding between us that I just haven’t felt before, or at least, not for a long time. ❜ ❨940❩ ❛ There can be no greater agony, nothing can be more painful than the not knowing, which will never end. ❜ ❨941❩ ❛ Being the other woman is a huge turn-on, there’s no point in denying it: you’re the one he can’t help but betray his wife for, even though he loves her. That’s just how irresistible you are. ❜ ❨942❩ ❛ I feel a rush of gratitude so strong, it feels almost like love. ❜ ❨943❩ ❛ You don’t know how determined I can be. Once I’ve made my mind up, I’m a force to be reckoned with. ❜ ❨944❩ ❛ The more I want to be oblivious, the less I can be. Life and light will not let me be. ❜ ❨945❩ ❛ You don’t have to be afraid of being alone. It’s not the worst thing, is it? ❜ ❨946❩ ❛ I have felt this way before. On a larger scale, to a more intense degree, of course, but I remember the quality of the pain. You don’t forget it. ❜ ❨947❩ ❛ If he thinks I’m going to sit around crying, he’s got another thing coming. ❜ ❨948❩ ❛ I don’t like to lose. It’s not like me. None of this is like me. I don’t get rejected. I’m the one who walks away. ❜ ❨949❩ ❛ I don’t remember anger, raging fury. I remember fear. ❜ ❨950❩ ❛ I can’t sleep. I haven’t slept in days. I hate it, hate insomnia more than anything, just lying there, brain going round, tick, tick, tick, tick. ❜ ❨951❩ ❛ Maybe the courage I need has nothing to do with telling the truth and everything to do with walking away. ❜ ❨952❩ ❛ I’m not beautiful, and I can’t have kids, so what does that make me? Worthless. ❜ ❨953❩ ❛ Failure cloaked me like a mantle, it overwhelmed me, dragged me under and I gave up hope. ❜ ❨954❩ ❛ It’s an odd thing to say, but I think this all the time; I don’t feel bad enough. ❜ ❨955❩ ❛ Some battles aren’t worth fighting. ❜ ❨956❩ ❛ I never felt guilty. I pretended I did. I had to. ❜ ❨957❩ ❛ I never meant for any of this to happen, we fell in love, what could we do? ❜ ❨958❩ ❛ What bothers me most is that I haven’t got to the end of my story, and I can’t start over with someone else, it’s too hard. ❜ ❨959❩ ❛ A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended. ❜ ❨960❩ ❛ It isn’t only wickedness and scheming that make people unhappy, it is confusion and misunderstanding. ❜ ❨961❩ ❛ Falling in love can be achieved in a single word—a glance. ❜ ❨962❩ ❛ Though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you. ❜ ❨963❩ ❛ I’ve never had a moment’s doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life. ❜ ❨964❩ ❛ It might hurt, it is horribly inconvenient, no good might come of it, but it is what it is to be in love. ❜ ❨965❩ ❛ It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. ❜ ❨966❩ ❛ Come back, come back to me. ❜ ❨967❩ ❛ In my thoughts I make love to you all day long. ❜ ❨968❩ ❛ The truth is I feel rather light headed and foolish in your presence and I don’t think I can blame the heat. ❜ ❨969❩ ❛ Beauty occupies a narrow band. Ugliness, on the other hand, has infinite variation. ❜ ❨970❩ ❛ Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy? ❜ ❨971❩ ❛ However, withered, I still feel myself to be exactly the same person I’ve always been. ❜ ❨972❩ ❛ Hate is a feeling as pure as love, but dispassionate and icily rational. ❜ ❨973❩ ❛ I’m going mad. Let me not be mad. ❜ ❨974❩ ❛ Is everyone really as alive as I am? ❜ ❨975❩ ❛ Every now and then, quite unintentionally, someone teaches you something about yourself. ❜ ❨976❩ ❛ Something has happened, hasn’t it? ❜ ❨977❩ ❛ I like to think that it isn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness. ❜ ❨978❩ ❛ Is it possible that I am, in the modern term, in denial? ❜ ❨979❩ ❛ How could anyone presume to know the world through the eyes of an insect? ❜ ❨980❩ ❛ Not everything has a cause. Some things are simply so. ❜ ❨981❩ ❛ I’ll be quite honest with you. I’m torn between breaking your neck here and throwing you down the stairs. ❜ ❨982❩ ❛ How old do you have to be before you know the difference between right and wrong? ❜ ❨983❩ ❛ It was never meant to be read. ❜ ❨984❩ ❛ If I fell in the river, would you save me? ❜ ❨985❩ ❛ That was an incredibly bloody stupid thing to do. ❜ ❨986❩ ❛ I want to thank you for saving my life. I’ll be eternally grateful to you. ❜ ❨987❩ ❛ I’m very, very sorry for the terrible distress that I have caused. I’m very, very sorry. ❜ ❨988❩ ❛ Don’t call me that! – Please don’t call me that. ❜ ❨989❩ ❛ It may be the wrong decision, but fuck it, it’s mine. ❜ ❨990❩ ❛ Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer. ❜ ❨991❩ ❛ No one ever really gets used to nightmares. ❜ ❨992❩ ❛ I still get nightmares. In fact, I get them so often I should be used to them by now. I’m not. ❜ ❨993❩ ❛ Sublime is something you choke on after a shot of tequila. ❜ ❨994❩ ❛ Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it. ❜ ❨995❩ ❛ Beautiful women are always drawn to men they think will keep them beautiful. ❜ ❨996❩ ❛ The ruminations are mine, let the world be yours. ❜ ❨997❩ ❛ You will fulfil a promise I made years ago but failed to keep. ❜ ❨998❩ ❛ Darkness never satisfies. Especially if it takes something away which it almost always invariably does. ❜ ❨999❩ ❛ I want something else. I’m not even sure what to call it anymore. ❜ ❨1000❩ ❛ What can I say, I’m a sucker for abandoned stuff, misplaced stuff, forgotten stuff, any old stuff. ❜ ❨1001❩ ❛ Is it possible to love something so much, you imagine it wants to destroy you only because it has denied you? ❜ ❨1002❩ ❛ It’s just silent, no sound at all. It’s like something’s waiting. ❜ ❨1003❩ ❛ I guess I’m hoping the weapons will make me feel better, grant me some kind of fucking control. ❜ ❨1004❩ ❛ Oh and something else: – Fuck you. ❜ ❨1005❩ ❛ God I’ve never been afraid like this. ❜ ❨1006❩ ❛ I miss you. I love you. There’s no second I’ve lived that you can’t call your own. ❜ ❨1007❩ ❛ I’m so tired. Sleep’s been stalking me for too long to remember. Inevitable I suppose. ❜ ❨1008❩ ❛ Not seeing the rip doesn’t mean you automatically get to keep clear of the Hey-I’m-Bleeding part. ❜ ❨1009❩ ❛ These days fantasies flourish and die like summer flies. ❜ ❨1010❩ ❛ Yeah I know, I know. This shit’s getting ridiculous. ❜ ❨1011❩ ❛ ‘Fuck’ and 'fall for’ have very different meanings. The first one you do as much as you can. The second one you never ever, ever do. ❜ ❨1012❩ ❛ It’s a nice idea but it reeks of hope. False hope. ❜ ❨1013❩ ❛ It’s, well…one thing in two words: fucked up…very fucked up. Okay three words, four words, who the hell cares…very very fucked up. ❜ ❨1014❩ ❛ Do you think I could spend the night at your place?  ❜ ❨1015❩ ❛ Any fool can pray. ❜ ❨1016❩ ❛ I feel like I haven’t slept in months. My neighbours are scared of me. ❜ ❨1017❩ ❛ I’ve lost my mind? Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe I’m just really drunk. ❜ ❨1018❩ ❛ Perhaps by cleaning out my system I’ll come to a clearing where I can ease myself into peace. ❜ ❨1019❩ ❛ I should be dead. Why am I still here? ❜ ❨1020❩ ❛ Fuck if I know. Your guess is as good as mine. ❜ ❨1021❩ ❛ You are my flesh. You are my bones. I know you too well. I read you too perfectly. ❜ ❨1022❩ ❛ Not all complex problems have easy solutions. ❜ ❨1023❩ ❛ Do you believe in God? I don’t think I ever asked you that one. ❜ ❨1024❩ ❛ We all create stories to protect ourselves. ❜ ❨1025❩ ❛ Are you kidding me? This place is scary. ❜ ❨1026❩ ❛ These days the only thing that gets me outside is when I say: Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck you. Fuck me. Fuck this. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. ❜ ❨1027❩ ❛ You like that crap because it reminds you of you. ❜ ❨1028❩ ❛ You may suddenly realise things are not how you perceived them to be at all. ❜ ❨1029❩ ❛ The two hardest tests are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter. ❜ ❨1030❩ ❛ People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves. ❜ ❨1031❩ ❛ Be crazy! But learn how to be crazy without being the center of attention. Be brave enough to live different. ❜ ❨1032❩ ❛ You are someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that in my view is a serious illness. ❜ ❨1033❩ ❛ God chose you to be different. ❜ ❨1034❩ ❛ Why are you disappointing God with this kind of attitude? ❜ ❨1035❩ ❛ You have two choices, to control your mind or to let your mind control you. ❜ ❨1036❩ ❛ Everyone is indeed crazy, but the craziest are the ones who don't know they're crazy; they just keep repeating what others tell them to. ❜ ❨1037❩ ❛ Haven't you learned anything, not even with the approach of death?  ❜ ❨1038❩ ❛ If people don't like it, they can complain. And if they don't have the courage to complain, that's their problem. ❜ ❨1039❩ ❛ Nothing in this world happens by chance. ❜ ❨1040❩ ❛ I want to continue living my life the way I dream it, and not the way the other people want it to be. ❜ ❨1041❩ ❛ Be like the fountain that overflows, not like the cistern that merely contains. ❜ ❨1042❩ ❛ Collective madness is called sanity. ❜ ❨1043❩ ❛ Consider each day a miracle - which indeed it is, when you consider the number of unexpected things that could happen in each second of our fragile existences. ❜ ❨1044❩ ❛ You say they create their own reality, but what is reality? ❜ ❨1045❩ ❛ Many people don't allow themselves to love because there are a lot of things at risk. A lot of future and a lot of past. ❜ ❨1046❩ ❛ Death frees from the fear of dying. ❜ ❨1047❩ ❛ The danger of an adventure is worth a thousand days of ease and comfort. ❜ ❨1048❩ ❛ The happier people can be, the unhappier they are. ❜ ❨1049❩ ❛ Life is always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act. ❜ ❨1050❩ ❛ It's best to accept life as it really is and not as you imagined it to be. ❜ ❨1051❩ ❛ You don't seem mad at all. ❜ ❨1052❩ ❛ We’re allowed to make a lot of mistakes in our lives, except the mistake that destroys us. ❜ ❨1053❩ ❛ You’re what you are, not what others make of you. ❜ ❨1054❩ ❛ Am I cured? ❜ ❨1055❩ ❛ Real love changes and grows with time and discovers new ways of expressing itself. ❜ ❨1056❩ ❛ A lot of people think something is right, and so that thing becomes right. Is that it? ❜ ❨1057❩ ❛ They think they're normal, because they all do the same thing. ❜ ❨1058❩ ❛ I didn't know that other ‘me’s existed inside me, ‘Me’s that I could love. ❜ ❨1059❩ ❛ I have no idea what's awaiting me. ❜ ❨1060❩ ❛ What will happen when this all ends? ❜ ❨1061❩ ❛ I know that you are capable of great deeds. ❜ ❨1062❩ ❛ A loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart. ❜ ❨1063❩ ❛ The truth is that everyone is bored. ❜ ❨1064❩ ❛ I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine. ❜ ❨1065❩ ❛ If there is one thing one can always yearn for, and sometimes attain, it is human love. ❜ ❨1066❩ ❛ Who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for even a single moment's suffering? ❜ ❨1067❩ ❛ It's not easy. I've been thinking it over for years. ❜ ❨1068❩ ❛ While we loved each other we didn't need words to make ourselves understood. ❜ ❨1069❩ ❛ People are more often bad than good. ❜ ❨1070❩ ❛ I don't believe in heroism; I know it's easy and I've learned that it can be murderous. ❜ ❨1071❩ ❛ What interests me is living and dying for what one loves. ❜ ❨1072❩ ❛ In fact, nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. ❜ ❨1073❩ ❛ Nothing in the world is worth turning one's back on what one loves. ❜ ❨1074❩ ❛ Again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. ❜ ❨1075❩ ❛ There are more things to admire in men then to despise. ❜ ❨1076❩ ❛ It is in the thick of calamity that one gets hardened to the truth - in other words, to silence. ❜ ❨1077❩ ❛ What on earth prompted you to take a hand in this? ❜ ❨1078❩ ❛ Your code of morals? What code, if I may ask? ❜ ❨1079❩ ❛ I'm fumbling in the dark, struggling to make something out. But I've long ceased finding anything. ❜ ❨1080❩ ❛ No doubt our love is still there, but quite simply it is unusable, heavy to carry, inert inside of us, sterile as crime or condemnation. ❜ ❨1081❩ ❛ I’m not happy to go, but one needn't be happy to make another start. ❜ ❨1082❩ ❛ I am incapable of suffering for a long time, or being happy for a long time. Which means that I am incapable of anything really worth while. ❜ ❨1083❩ ❛ I should have found the words to keep her with me. ❜ ❨1084❩ ❛ We can't stir a finger in this world without the risk of bringing death to somebody. ❜ ❨1085❩ ❛ The evil that is in the world comes out of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. ❜ ❨1086❩ ❛ There are always flies and itches. That’s why life is difficult to live. ❜ ❨1087❩ ❛ The best protection against anything is a good bottle of wine. ❜ ❨1088❩ ❛ There is no peace without hope. ❜ ❨1089❩ ❛ It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment. ❜ ❨1090❩ ❛ There is always something left to love. ❜ ❨1091❩ ❛ A person doesn’t die when he should but when he can. ❜ ❨1092❩ ❛ Things have a life of their own. It's simply a matter of waking up their souls. ❜ ❨1093❩ ❛ Tell me something: why are you fighting? ❜ ❨1094❩ ❛ I've come to realise only just now that I'm fighting because of pride. ❜ ❨1095❩ ❛ One minute of reconciliation is worth more than a whole life of friendship. ❜ ❨1096❩ ❛ It's better than not knowing why you're fighting. Or fighting, like you, for something that doesn't have any meaning for anyone. ❜ ❨1097❩ ❛ Holy Mother of God! ❜ ❨1098❩ ❛ A person does not belong to a place until there is someone dead under the ground. ❜ ❨1099❩ ❛ I was born a son of a bitch and I'm going to die a son of a bitch. ❜ ❨1100❩ ❛ Bad luck doesn't have any chinks in it. ❜ ❨1101❩ ❛ I plead youth as a mitigating circumstance. ❜ ❨1102❩ ❛ Get those bad thoughts out of your head. You're going to be happy. ❜ ❨1103❩ ❛ Children inherit their parents' madness. ❜ ❨1104❩ ❛ I'll turn to ashes in here but I won't give this miserable town the pleasure of seeing me weep. ❜ ❨1105❩ ❛ You would be good in a war. Where you put your eye, you put your bullet. ❜ ❨1106❩ ❛ Men demand much more than you think. ❜ ❨1107❩ ❛ Even the craziest and most persistent love is just a temporary truth. ❜ ❨1108❩ ❛ If we’re alone you can whisper in my ear any crap you can think of. ❜ ❨1109❩ ❛ You have taken this horrible game very seriously and you have done well because you are doing your duty. ❜ ❨1110❩ ❛ We have the right to pull down your pants and give you a whipping at the first sign of disrespect. ❜ ❨1111❩ ❛ What worries me is not your shooting me, because after all, for people like us it's a natural death. ❜ ❨1112❩ ❛ What worries me is that you've ended up as bad as they are. ❜ ❨1113❩ ❛ It is characteristic of men to deny hunger once their appetites are satisfied. ❜ ❨1114❩ ❛ Dying is much more difficult than one imagines. ❜ ❨1115❩ ❛ If you have to go crazy, please go crazy all by yourself! ❜ ❨1116❩ ❛ We have still not had a death. ❜ ❨1117❩ ❛ How awful, the way time passes. ❜ ❨1118❩ ❛ You may be in command of your war, but I'm in command of my house. ❜ ❨1119❩ ❛ I missed you every hour. ❜ ❨1120❩ ❛ You know what the worst part was? It caught me completely by surprise. ❜ ❨1121❩ ❛ I’ve risked my life for you. ❜ ❨1122❩ ❛ The problem with wanting is that it makes us weak. ❜ ❨1123❩ ❛ I love you, even the part of you that loved him. ❜ ❨1124❩ ❛ I’m sorry it took me so long to see you. ❜ ❨1125❩ ❛ I never really belonged anywhere. ❜ ❨1126❩ ❛ Thanks for being my best friend and making my life bearable.  ❜ ❨1127❩ ❛ Thanks for finding me. ❜ ❨1128❩ ❛ You and I are going to change the world. ❜ ❨1129❩ ❛ I’ve been waiting for you a long time. ❜ ❨1130❩ ❛ I’m not used to people trying to kill me. ❜ ❨1131❩ ❛ You’re shaking. ❜ ❨1132❩ ❛ There's nothing wrong with being a lizard. Unless you were born to be a hawk. ❜ ❨1133❩ ❛ Make me your villain. ❜ ❨1134❩ ❛ Just you and me. It’s always just you and me. ❜ ❨1135❩ ❛ Do you blame me for every mistake I made? For every dumb thing I’ve said? ❜ ❨1136❩ ❛ Well, if it gets too bad, give me a signal. ❜ ❨1137❩ ❛ Did you tell him what I showed you in the dark? ❜ ❨1138❩ ❛ Did you miss me when you were gone? ❜ ❨1139❩ ❛ What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men. ❜ ❨1140❩ ❛ You’re interfering with my plan. ❜ ❨1141❩ ❛ Too much champagne? ❜ ❨1142❩ ❛ I hope you don’t expect fairness from me. It isn’t one of my specialties. ❜ ❨1143❩ ❛ There is something more powerful than any army. Something strong enough to topple kings. Faith. ❜ ❨1144❩ ❛ All you said was that I had to kill you. You didn’t say how. ❜ ❨1145❩ ❛ What is she? She’s everything, you dumb son of a bitch. ❜ ❨1146❩ ❛ She’s an ugly little thing. No child should look like that. Pale and sour, like a glass of milk that’s turned. ❜ ❨1147❩ ❛ I wouldn’t make that mistake again. ❜ ❨1148❩ ❛ It’s a great honor, to save a life. You saved many. ❜ ❨1149❩ ❛ In this world, there are things you can only do alone. ❜ ❨1150❩ ❛ What seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else. ❜ ❨1151❩ ❛ If you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price. ❜ ❨1152❩ ❛ Why should you be interested in me? ❜ ❨1153❩ ❛ I have been told I've got a darkish personality. A few times. ❜ ❨1154❩ ❛ It's not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There's shadowy middle ground. ❜ ❨1155❩ ❛ I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel. ❜ ❨1156❩ ❛ The spotlight doesn't suit me. I'm more of a side dish. ❜ ❨1157❩ ❛ The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you.  ❜ ❨1158❩ ❛ So once you're dead there's just nothing? ❜ ❨1159❩ ❛ If only I could fall sound asleep and wake up in my old reality. ❜ ❨1160❩ ❛ Is action merely the incidental product of thought, or is thought the consequential product of action? ❜ ❨1161❩ ❛ Nobody can shake off their own shadow. ❜ ❨1162❩ ❛ The silence is so deep it hurts. ❜ ❨1163❩ ❛ I may not look it, but I can be a very patient guy. ❜ ❨1164❩ ❛ Killing time is one of my specialities. ❜ ❨1165❩ ❛ You can't fight it. ❜ ❨1166❩ ❛ Tell me something,—do you believe in reincarnation? ❜ ❨1167❩ ❛ I can’t understand nothingness. I can’t understand it and I can’t imagine it. ❜ ❨1168❩ ❛ I can hardly breathe, and my whole body wants to shrink into a corner.  ❜ ❨1169❩ ❛ I do have a few things wrong with me, but those are strictly problems I keep inside. ❜ ❨1170❩ ❛ I can't take it any more, I can't go on any more. ❜ ❨1171❩ ❛ You don't really have it together. ❜ ❨1172❩ ❛ Is it against the law for me to know it? ❜ ❨1173❩ ❛ I keep having the same dream. ❜ ❨1174❩ ❛ Are you asking because you really want an answer? ❜ ❨1175❩ ❛ I hate this! I don't want to be changed this way! ❜ ❨1176❩ ❛ No contradictions, no irony. They do everything according to numerical formulas. ❜ ❨1177❩ ❛ Want to hear the rest? If you’re not interested, I can stop. ❜ ❨1178❩ ❛ If I didn’t have these memories inside me, I would’ve snapped a long time ago. I would’ve curled up in a ditch somewhere and died. ❜ ❨1179❩ ❛ I don’t know what you’re feeling. I won’t even pretend. ❜ ❨1180❩ ❛ What are you doing here, honey? ❜ ❨1181❩ ❛ You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets. ❜ ❨1182❩ ❛ You don't understand me. ❜ ❨1183❩ ❛ All wisdom ends in paradox. ❜ ❨1184❩ ❛ It is love that overthrows empire. Love that binds two hearts together, come hellfire & brimstone. ❜ ❨1185❩ ❛ I have lost my gift. ❜ ❨1186❩ ❛ Winter is the season of alcoholism and despair. ❜ ❨1187❩ ❛ The seeds of death get lost in the mess that God made us. ❜ ❨1188❩ ❛ They're just memories now. It’s time to forget. ❜ ❨1189❩ ❛ The time has to be right and the heart willing. ❜ ❨1190❩ ❛ The world, a tired performer, offers us another half-assed season. ❜ ❨1191❩ ❛ Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy. ❜ ❨1192❩ ❛ Grief is natural, overcoming it is a matter of choice. ❜ ❨1193❩ ❛ I want out of that decorating scheme. ❜ ❨1194❩ ❛ With most people suicide is like Russian roulette. Only one chamber has a bullet. ❜ ❨1195❩ ❛ You never get over it but you get where it doesn't bother you so much. ❜ ❨1196❩ ❛ Don't waste your time on life. ❜ ❨1197❩ ❛ I'm a teenager. I've got problems! ❜ ❨1198❩ ❛ Adolescents tend to seek love where they can find it. ❜ ❨1199❩ ❛ Obviously, you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl. ❜ ❨1200❩ ❛ It was a mistake. ❜ ❨1201❩ ❛ It seemed like we were supposed to feel sorry for everything that ever happened, ever. ❜ ❨1202❩ ❛ Buffeted but not broken. ❜ ❨1203❩ ❛ Shit. What have kids got to be worried about now? ❜ ❨1204❩ ❛ If they want trouble, they should go live in Bangladesh. ❜ ❨1205❩ ❛ I can't wait until I get out of here. ❜ ❨1206❩ ❛ When she jumped she probably thought she’d fly. ❜ ❨1207❩ ❛ I do not think the patient truly meant to end her life. Her act was a cry for help. ❜ ❨1208❩ ❛ You're a stone fox. ❜ ❨1209❩ ❛ It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight. ❜ ❨1210❩ ❛ Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. ❜ ❨1211❩ ❛ He broke my heart. You merely broke my life. ❜ ❨1212❩ ❛ I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is. ❜ ❨1213❩ ❛ Words without experience are meaningless. ❜ ❨1214❩ ❛ I loved you. I was a monster, but I loved you. ❜ ❨1215❩ ❛ Come just as you are. ❜ ❨1216❩ ❛ If a violin string could ache, i would be that string. ❜ ❨1217❩ ❛ Perhaps, somewhere, some day, at a less miserable time, we may see each other again. ❜ ❨1218❩ ❛ What's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own. ❜ ❨1219❩ ❛ Don't touch me; I'll die if you touch me. ❜ ❨1220❩ ❛ You took advantage of my disadvantage. ❜ ❨1221❩ ❛ I walk in a maze I cannot get out of. ❜ ❨1222❩ ❛ Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses. ❜ ❨1223❩ ❛ Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me. ❜ ❨1224❩ ❛ There is no harm in smiling. ❜ ❨1225❩ ❛ There is no point in staying here. There is no point in staying anywhere. ❜ ❨1226❩ ❛ There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child. ❜ ❨1227❩ ❛ I am so tired of being cynical. ❜ ❨1228❩ ❛ Come to live with me, and die with me, and everything with me. ❜ ❨1229❩ ❛ This is the only immortality that you and I may share. ❜ ❨1230❩ ❛ I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else. ❜ ❨1231❩ ❛ I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t’aimais, je t’aimais! ❜ ❨1232❩ ❛ Years of secret suffering has taught me superhuman self-control. ❜ ❨1233❩ ❛ Solitude is corrupting me. I need company and care. ❜ ❨1234❩ ❛ I've missed you terribly. ❜ ❨1235❩ ❛ I've been revoltingly unfaithful to you. ❜ ❨1236❩ ❛ It doesn't matter a bit, because you've stopped caring anyway. ❜ ❨1237❩ ❛ What makes you say I've stopped caring for you? ❜ ❨1238❩ ❛ Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer. ❜ ❨1239❩ ❛ The sun climbs high in the sky, then starts down. People come, then go. ❜ ❨1240❩ ❛ Tell me, have you ever thought of killing me? ❜ ❨1241❩ ❛ I can not believe you are the same human being. ❜ ❨1242❩ ❛ Just how urgent is it? ❜ ❨1243❩ ❛ It is time for you to be going. ❜ ❨1244❩ ❛ How is it you know something like that? ❜ ❨1245❩ ❛ I don’t mind. Your mess is my mess. ❜ ❨1246❩ ❛ Everybody has one thing they do not want to lose. ❜ ❨1247❩ ❛ I’ll be late tonight, so don’t wait up for me. ❜ ❨1248❩ ❛ Nothing I’ve tried to do by myself has ever come off. ❜ ❨1249❩ ❛ I am not catching you in the middle of anything important, am I? ❜ ❨1250❩ ❛ Some things are forgotten, some things disappear, some things die. ❜ ❨1251❩ ❛ My biggest fault is that the faults I was born with grow bigger each year. ❜ ❨1252❩ ❛ To get irritated is to lose our way in life. ❜ ❨1253❩ ❛ A friend to kill time is a friend sublime. ❜ ❨1254❩ ❛ I don't really know if it's the right thing to do. ❜ ❨1255❩ ❛ Faster cars and more cats run over? Who needs it? ❜ ❨1256❩ ❛ Most of everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories. ❜ ❨1257❩ ❛ Your fate is and will always be the fate of a dreamer. ❜ ❨1258❩ ❛ You’re loads better than you think you are. ❜ ❨1259❩ ❛ You’re only half-living, the other half is still untapped somewhere. ❜ ❨1260❩ ❛ The song is over. But the melody lingers on. ❜ ❨1261❩ ❛ You are extraordinary. ❜ ❨1262❩ ❛ We tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on. ❜ ❨1263❩ ❛ It could be five years or ten years or one month. It's all the same. ❜ ❨1264❩ ❛ I’m forever realising things too late. ❜ ❨1265❩ ❛ I’m not complaining when I say my life is boring. ❜ ❨1266❩ ❛ Weakness is something that rots in the body. ❜ ❨1267❩ ❛ Coming from your mouth, it has the ring of truth, but I doubt anyone would believe me if I told them. ❜ ❨1268❩ ❛ You can't expect something unreal to last anyway, can you? ❜ ❨1269❩ ❛ A wise man does not step betwixt the beast and his meat. ❜ ❨1270❩ ❛ So, kill me. Tell the others I attacked you so you killed me. ❜ ❨1271❩ ❛ Should never have come here. ❜ ❨1272❩ ❛ Hard to guess my tastes. ❜ ❨1273❩ ❛ Can’t it wait until the morning? ❜ ❨1274❩ ❛ You’ll find temper tantrums won’t help you here. ❜ ❨1275❩ ❛ It must have taken courage to return. ❜ ❨1276❩ ❛ It all sounds grimly dystopian. ❜ ❨1277❩ ❛ I am not afraid of you! ❜ ❨1278❩ ❛ All this could be avoided! ❜ ❨1279❩ ❛ You consider me a murderer? ❜ ❨1280❩ ❛ Gross way to die. ❜ ❨1281❩ ❛ What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. ❜ ❨1282❩ ❛ My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops? ❜ ❨1283❩ ❛ Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others. ❜ ❨1284❩ ❛ I believe there is another world waiting for us. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there. ❜ ❨1285❩ ❛ You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective - it just means you're human. ❜ ❨1286❩ ❛ Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible. ❜ ❨1287❩ ❛ Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty. ❜ ❨1288❩ ❛ Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths. ❜ ❨1289❩ ❛ Dreams are all I have ever truly owned. ❜ ❨1290❩ ❛ Your version of the truth is the only thing that matters. ❜ ❨1291❩ ❛ I believe death is only a door. One closes, and another opens. ❜ ❨1292❩ ❛ By each crime and every kindness, we birth our future. ❜ ❨1293❩ ❛ The healthy can't understand the emptied, the broken. ❜ ❨1294❩ ❛ Lying's wrong, but when the world spins backwards, a small wrong may be a big right. ❜ ❨1295❩ ❛ The weak are meat the strong do eat. ❜ ❨1296❩ ❛ Do whatever you can't not do. ❜ ❨1297❩ ❛ What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts & virtuous acts. ❜ ❨1298❩ ❛ I remain thankful to God for all his mercies. ❜ ❨1299❩ ❛ You can maintain power over people, as long as you give them something. Rob a man of everything, and that man will no longer be in your power. ❜ ❨1300❩ ❛ Power. The ability to determine another man's luck. ❜ ❨1301❩ ❛ Pain is strong, aye - but friends' eyes, more strong. ❜ ❨1302❩ ❛ Perhaps those deprived of beauty perceive it most instinctively. ❜ ❨1303❩ ❛ Why ask a question whose answer would demand ten more questions? ❜ ❨1304❩ ❛ You can’t lie to your soul. ❜ ❨1305❩ ❛ Why would I want to do a thing like that? ❜ ❨1306❩ ❛ We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. ❜ ❨1307❩ ❛ Better to make life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be. ❜ ❨1308❩ ❛ I’m not running away, I’m moving on. ❜ ❨1309❩ ❛ The reasons? There are no reasons. ❜ ❨1310❩ ❛ Some people are easier to love when you don’t have to be around them. ❜ ❨1311❩ ❛ Love does not exist. ❜ ❨1312❩ ❛ Fuck that ‘regrets’ bullshit. ❜ ❨1313❩ ❛ How does it make you feel? ❜ ❨1314❩ ❛ It’s horrible how we always die alone, but no worse than living alone. ❜ ❨1315❩ ❛ Choose us. Choose life. ❜ ❨1316❩ ❛ You fucking knew that fucking cunt would fuck some cunt. ❜ ❨1317❩ ❛ I’m more of a warrior than you’ll ever be. ❜ ❨1318❩ ❛ What does that make us? The lowest of the low, the scum of the earth. ❜ ❨1319❩ ❛ You don’t have to run away.  ❜ ❨1320❩ ❛ I tried to stop because it was only causing pain. I couldn’t. ❜ ❨1321❩ ❛ I’m not going to get crushed. ❜ ❨1322❩ ❛ I love doubt in a woman. It’s nearly as sexy as determination. ❜ ❨1323❩ ❛ Take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty. ❜ ❨1324❩ ❛ You’re a mess. ❜ ❨1325❩ ❛ I know that it’s never left you alone. ❜ ❨1326❩ ❛ Are you asking me or telling me? ❜ ❨1327❩ ❛ You just get used to all the shit. ❜ ❨1328❩ ❛ You can’t afford a conscience in this life. ❜ ❨1329❩ ❛ None of us are saints and scapegoats are always handy. ❜ ❨1330❩ ❛ Doing things doesn’t hurt you; you get hurt by avoiding them. ❜ ❨1331❩ ❛ What was that? ❜ ❨1332❩ ❛ Protect me from those who wish to help us. ❜ ❨1333❩ ❛ You can’t love yourself if you want to hurt things like that. ❜ ❨1334❩ ❛ What happens when people open their hearts? ❜ ❨1335❩ ❛ Nobody likes being alone that much. ❜ ❨1336❩ ❛ I don’t go out of my way to make friends, that’s all. It just leads to disappointment.” ❨1337❩ ❛ Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that. ❜ ❨1338❩ ❛ You need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. ❜ ❨1339❩ ❛ I want you always to remember me. ❜ ❨1340❩ ❛ Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it’s time for them to be hurt. ❜ ❨1341❩ ❛ What stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish. ❜ ❨1342❩ ❛ All I want in this world is you. ❜ ❨1343❩ ❛ I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning. ❜ ❨1344❩ ❛ No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. ❜ ❨1345❩ ❛ What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously. ❜ ❨1346❩ ❛ If you’re in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark. ❜ ❨1347❩ ❛ I’ve had enough hurt already in my life. More than enough. Now I want to be happy. ❜ ❨1348❩ ❛ People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die. ❜ ❨1349❩ ❛ Stop eating yourself up alive. Things will go where they’re supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course. ❜ ❨1350❩ ❛ When your feelings build up and harden and die inside, then you’re in big trouble. ❜ ❨1351❩ ❛ When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. ❜ ❨1352❩ ❛ If I have left a wound inside you, it is not just your wound but mine as well. ❜ ❨1353❩ ❛ Hey, what is it with you? Why are you so spaced out? You still haven’t answered me. ❜ ❨1354❩ ❛ People are strange when you’re a stranger. ❜ ❨1355❩ ❛ The dead will always be dead, but we have to go on living. ❜ ❨1356❩ ❛ You don’t get it, do you? ❜ ❨1357❩ ❛ I am a flawed human being - a far more flawed human being than you ❨1358❩ realise. ❜ ❨1359❩ ❛ At least let me know whether or not I hurt you. ❜ ❨1360❩ ❛ All of us are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world. ❜ ❨1361❩ ❛ I’ve never once thought about how I was going to die. ❜ ❨1362❩ ❛ So I’m not crazy after all! ❜ ❨1363❩ ❛ I miss you terribly sometimes, but in general I go on living with all the energy I can muster. ❜ ❨1364❩ ❛ Will you wait for me forever? ❜ ❨1365❩ ❛ I don’t want our relationship to end like this. ❜ ❨1366❩ ❛ When am I going to be able to talk to you? I want you to tell me that much, at least. ❜ ❨1367❩ ❛ It hurts not being able to see you. ❜ ❨1368❩ ❛ I’m not totally mad at you. I’m just sad. ❜ ❨1369❩ ❛ The world is an inherently unfair place. ❜ ❨1370❩ ❛ Life frightens me sometimes. I don’t happen to take that as the premise for everything else though. ❜ ❨1371❩ ❛ I’m a real bargain, don’t you think? If you don’t take me, I’ll end up going somewhere else. ❜ ❨1372❩ ❛ We’re all kind of weird and twisted and drowning. ❜ ❨1373❩ ❛ Don’t you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go some place where you don’t know a soul? ❜ ❨1374❩ ❛ You’re not telling me anything I don’t know already. ❜ ❨1375❩ ❛ He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past. ❜ ❨1376❩ ❛ If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself. ❜ ❨1377❩ ❛ We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness. ❜ ❨1378❩ ❛ Until they become conscious they will never rebel. ❜ ❨1379❩ ❛ Power is not a means; it is an end. ❜ ❨1380❩ ❛ They are not interested in the good of others; they are interested solely in power, pure power. ❜ ❨1381❩ ❛ Now you begin to understand me. ❜ ❨1382❩ ❛ In the face of pain there are no heroes. ❜ ❨1383❩ ❛ Big Brother is watching you. ❜ ❨1384❩ ❛ Power is tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. ❜ ❨1385❩ ❛ It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. ❜ ❨1386❩ ❛ The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better. ❜ ❨1387❩ ❛ Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind. ❜ ❨1388❩ ❛ Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. ❜ ❨1389❩ ❛ We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them. ❜ ❨1390❩ ❛ How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? ❜ ❨1391❩ ❛ You must try harder. ❜ ❨1392❩ ❛ Confession is not betrayal. ❜ ❨1393❩ ❛ What you say or do doesn’t matter; only feelings matter. ❜ ❨1394❩ ❛ If they could make me stop loving you —- that would be the real betrayal. ❜ ❨1395❩ ❛ Of pain you can wish only one thing: that it should stop. ❜ ❨1396❩ ❛ To die hating them, that will be freedom. ❜ ❨1397❩ ❛ No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. ❜ ❨1398❩ ❛ What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself? ❜ ❨1399❩ ❛ To keep them in control is not difficult. ❜ ❨1400❩ ❛ So long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed. ❜ ❨1401❩ ❛ The consequences of every act are included in the act itself. ❜ ❨1402❩ ❛ The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. ❜ ❨1403❩ ❛ Stupidity is as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain. ❜ ❨1404❩ ❛ I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don’t want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones. ❜ ❨1405❩ ❛ The past is dead, the future is unimaginable. ❜ ❨1406❩ ❛ You know the answer already. Everyone knows it. ❜ ❨1407❩ ❛ You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care is yourself. ❜ ❨1408�� ❛ It is not easy to become sane. ❜ ❨1409❩ ❛ No emotion is pure anymore, because everything is mixed up with fear and hatred. ❜ ❨1410❩ ❛ They say that time heals all things —- they say you can always forget. ❜ ❨1411❩ ❛ The object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war. ❜ ❨1412❩ ❛ I sold you and you sold me. ❜ ❨1413❩ ❛ You do not exist. ❜ ❨1414❩ ❛ How does one man assert his power over another? By making him suffer. ❜ ❨1415❩ ❛ Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? ❜ ❨1416❩ ❛ Everything else we shall destroy – everything. ❜ ❨1417❩ ❛ Two and two makes five. ❜ ❨1418❩ ❛ Facts, at any rate, can not be kept hidden. ❜ ❨1419❩ ❛ The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. ❜ ❨1420❩ ❛ So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing. ❜ ❨1421❩ ❛ If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then? ❜ ❨1422❩ ❛ The lie became the truth. ❜ ❨1423❩ ❛ It is like swimming against a current that sweeps you backwards however hard you struggle. ❜ ❨1424❩ ❛ Turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. ❜ ❨1425❩ ❛ It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything. ❜ ❨1426❩ ❛ I don’t want to die without any scars. ❜ ❨1427❩ ❛ This is your life and it’s ending one moment at a time. ❜ ❨1428❩ ❛ You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways. ❜ ❨1429❩ ❛ You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. ❜ ❨1430❩ ❛ You are not special. ❜ ❨1431❩ ❛ You’re not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else. ❜ ❨1432❩ ❛ The things you used to own, now they own you. ❜ ❨1433❩ ❛ Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you. ❜ ❨1434❩ ❛ Maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves. ❜ ❨1435❩ ❛ Only after disaster can we be resurrected. ❜ ❨1436❩ ❛ Everything is evolving, everything is falling apart. ❜ ❨1437❩ ❛ We’ve all been raised believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. ❜ ❨1438❩ ❛ Don’t you have other things to do? ❜ ❨1439❩ ❛ Prove you’re alive. If you don’t claim your humanity you will become a statistic. ❜ ❨1440❩ ❛ You have been warned. ❜ ❨1441❩ ❛ If you don’t know what you want, you end up with a lot you don’t. ❜ ❨1442❩ ❛ It’s not love or anything, but I think I like you, too. ❜ ❨1443❩ ❛ If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person? ❜ ❨1444❩ ❛ Why did I cause so much pain? ❜ ❨1445❩ ❛ The lower you fall, the higher you’ll fly. ❜ ❨1446❩ ❛ Maybe self-improvement isn’t the answer, maybe self-destruction is the answer. ❜ ❨1447❩ ❛ May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect. ❜ ❨1448❩ ❛ Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head. ❜ ❨1449❩ ❛ We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. ❜ ❨1450❩ ❛ The girl is infectious human waste. ❜ ❨1451❩ ❛ I want to destroy everything beautiful I’ll never have. ❜ ❨1452❩ ❛ On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. ❜ ❨1453❩ ❛ If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose? ❜ ❨1454❩ ❛ It is like you’re never really awake; but you’re never really asleep. ❜ ❨1455❩ ❛ Worker bees can leave. Even drones can fly away. The Queen is their slave. ❜ ❨1456❩ ❛ A moment is the most you could ever expect from perfection. ❜ ❨1457❩ ❛ The people you’re trying to step on, we’re everyone you depend on. ❜ ❨1458❩ ❛ You have to give up! ❜ ❨1459❩ ❛ Reject the basic assumptions of civilisation, especially the importance of material possessions. ❜ ❨1460❩ ❛ Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. ❜ ❨1461❩ ❛ You have to realise that someday you will die, Until you know that, you are useless. ❜ ❨1462❩ ❛ A tiger can smile. A snake will say it loves you. ❜ ❨1463❩ ❛ Lies make us evil. ❜ ❨1464❩ ❛ If you died right now, how would you feel about your life? ❜ ❨1465❩ ❛ You always kill the one you love. ❜ ❨1466❩ ❛ Maybe we should always assume the worst. ❜ ❨1467❩ ❛ Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains. ❜ ❨1468❩ ❛ Which is worse? Hell or nothing? ❜ ❨1469❩ ❛ A minute of perfection is worth the effort. ❜ ❨1470❩ ❛ You’re going to die, tonight. You might die in one second or in one hour, you decide. ❜ ❨1471❩ ❛ Lie to me. Tell me the first thing off the top of your head. Make something up. ❜ ❨1472❩ ❛ I don’t give a shit. I have a gun. ❜ ❨1473❩ ❛ I know who you are. I know where you live. ❜ ❨1474❩ ❛ Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of your life. ❜ ❨1475❩ ❛ My philosophy of life is that I can die at any moment. And the tragedy of my life is that I do not. ❜ ❨1476❩ ❛ Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy. You can’t touch anything and nothing can touch you. ❜ ❨1477❩ ❛ There are a lot of things we don’t want to know about the people we love. ❜ ❨1478❩ ❛ We just had a near-life experience. ❜ ❨1479❩ ❛ If people think you are dying, they give you their full attention. They listen instead of just waiting for their turn to speak. ❜ ❨1480❩ ❛ I am nothing, and not even that. ❜ ❨1481❩ ❛ This isn’t really death. —- We’ll be legends. We won’t grow old. ❜ ❨1482❩ ❛ Stop trying to control everything and just let go. Let go. ❜ ❨1483❩ ❛ The amazing miracle of death, when one second you’re walking and talking, and the next second you’re an object. ❜ ❨1484❩ ❛ Only if we’re caught and punished can we be saved. ❜ ❨1485❩ ❛ I never thought about how important the sky was until I didn't have one. ❜ ❨1486❩ ❛ Dreams are like that: they go in and out of memories and scenes, but they're never real. They're never real, and I hate them because they aren't. ❜ ❨1487❩ ❛ Power isn’t control at all — power is strength, and giving that strength to others. ❜ ❨1488❩ ❛ A leader isn’t someone who forces others to make him stronger. ❜ ❨1489❩ ❛ A leader is someone willing to give his strength to others that they may have the strength to stand on their own. ❜ ❨1490❩ ❛ In the end, we are alone. ❜ ❨1491❩ ❛ It is like a piece of my soul is lost, empty. ❜ ❨1492❩ ❛ If my life on Earth must end, let it end with a promise. Let it end with hope. ❜ ❨1493❩ ❛ Sorry? Sorry isn't enough. ❜ ❨1494❩ ❛ Every single thing I ever loved is beyond my reach now. Everything I ever wanted. Everything I ever was. ❜ ❨1495❩ ❛ Will you stay with me? ❜ ❨1496❩ ❛ A leader doesn't make pawns - he makes people. ❜ ❨1497❩ ❛ Do you hear that? The pulse of life from your heart, the slow in-and-out from your lungs? Even when you are silent, even when you block out all noise, your body is still a cacophony of life. Mine is not. ❜ ❨1498❩ ❛ It is the silence that drives me mad. The silence that drives the nightmares to me. ❜ ❨1499❩ ❛ There is nothing between us but rain. There is nothing between us at all. ❜ ❨1500❩ ❛ I like a little chaos. ❜