Why We Broke Up

In the bathroom mirror there was even a smudge of dirt on my neck, and I wiped it off in a hurried flush, the cheap paper towel so rough against my skin that I looked for a scrape in my reflection and then, meeting my own eyes, stood for a sec and tried to figure, like all girls in all mirrors everywhere, the difference between lover and slut. 

~Daniel Handler

Essays in Idleness

Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, the moon only when it is cloudless? To long for the moon while looking on the rain, to lower the blinds and be unaware of the passing of spring-- these are even more deeply moving. Branches about to bloom or gardens strewn with faded flowers are worthier of our admiration--in all things, it is the beginnings and endings that are interesting...If man were never to die away but lingered on forever in the world, how things would lose their power to move us. The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty.

~Yoshida Kenko

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood

Nothing's worse than saying goodbye. It's a little like dying. 

~Marjane Satrapi

Invisible Man

There's a stench in the air, which, from this distance underground, might be the smell either of death or of spring--I hope of spring. But don't let me trick you, there is a death in the smell of spring and in the smell of thee as in the smell of me. 

Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?

~Ralph Ellison

Invisible Man

For history records the patterns of men's lives, they say: Who slept with whom and with what results; who fought and who won and who lived to lie about it afterward. 

~Ralph Ellison

Invisible Man

Above the decorous walking around me, sounds of footsteps leaving the verandas of far-flung buildings and moving toward the walks and over the walks to the asphalt drives lined with whitewashed stones, those cryptic messages for men and women, boys and girls heading quietly toward where the visitors waited, and we moving not in the mood of worship but of judgement. 

~Ralph Ellison

Savages

We're just animals still learning how to crawl...

All the hate coming out from a generation who got everything and nothing guided by temptation. 

~Marina and The Diamonds