“Life narrows when we cling to certainty, but it opens wide when we choose curiosity.”
Source: Fool for Thought: Reflections on Life, Identity, and Open-Mindedness
“Since that time ten years have passed; then fifteen. The grass has grown thick over the grave of my youth. I served out my term and even 'eternal exile' as well.”
Source: The Gulag Archipelago
“He hadn't planned on crying, but he seemed to understand that there are times in a man's life when he can do nothing else.”
Source: The Persimmon Trail and Other Stories
“What’s broken can also mend.”
Source: Delicious Death
“My experience of life always includes losing the things that are mine or having them forcibly taken away and being thrown away myself. I wasn’t wanted as a child, I skipped from foster home to foster home, never staying long enough to get settled, and then I aged out of the system into homelessness. I’ve never gotten to keep anything for long—not even friends or family; death has taken all of those types of people away from me—and the worry that I’m about to lose everything I’ve gained since meeting Fox has been hanging out in the back of my head, taking up space, living rent-free.”
Source: The Trouble With Trying to Save an Assassin
“If I leave you, won't I be leaving a part of myself too?”
Source: Dark little corners
“The only reason he is unavoidable to suicide
is that he wants to be alone and find peace.
“What's a better place to be than in a grave?,” as he puts it.
I wish I could dispute that.”
Source: Dark little corners
“How can I ever write poetry on passionate kisses
and intimate touch of two souls
when the intimacy itself
has wiped a part of my soul?”
Source: Dark little corners
“Verdancy, you mustn't let yourself waste away like this and think you're doing it for Kuo Chen. If Kuo Chen is there and knows about it, he won't be able to rest in peace."
Verdancy listened to me; all of a sudden she sat up, shaking she nodded at me and laughed coldly.
"What does he know? He fell and his body was dashed to pieces; how can he feel now? So much the better for him: bang and he's no more - I died, too, but I can still feel."
As she spoke, her face was distorted, half crying and half laughing, a terrible sight.”
Source: Taipei People
“There is some comfort for me in knowing that life will go on even when we don’t. But I would argue that when our light goes out, it will be Earth’s greatest tragedy, because while I know humans are prone to grandiosity, I also think we are by far the most interesting thing that ever happened on Earth.
It’s easy to forget how wondrous humans are, how strange and lovely. Through photography and art, each of us has seen things we’ll never see—the surface of Mars, the bioluminescent fish of the deep ocean, a seventeenth-century girl with a pearl earring. Through empathy, we’ve felt things we might never have otherwise felt. Through the rich world of imagination, we’ve seen apocalypses large and small.
We’re the only part of the known universe that knows it’s in a universe. We know we are circling a star that will one day engulf us. We’re the only species that knows it has a temporal range.”
Source: The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet