delirious | Entries tagged with quotes

So I was trying to find this paragraph in my copy of American Gods for the past few weeks, and then I stumbled across it. On a tshirt. I need this shirt, stat!

I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen–I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones who look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline of good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of The Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies too. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

-American Gods, Neil Gaiman

With all the lighter fluid, the pule lit up fast, the flash instantly warming my face. I stood there and didn't try to stop her because I loved her too much then. I knew it wasn't good to burn all of Dad's things, but how can you not love someone who lets you see them in all that pain? For the first time, I saw her clearly, as if I were inside a dream of hers watching all her thoughts. She wasn't putting on an act. She wasn't being a nurse. She wasn't being a mother or a wfe or a good Christian. She was just dropping to her knees, inches from teh fire, and sliding her thin arms into the flames. If I screamed I didn't hear it, but I did pull her back, grabbing a fistful of her bathrobe, fulling understanding that I was now playing a part in that dream.

When the firetrucks and the ambulance came, I left her and ran into the house. I locked all the doors, turned off all the lights because we had revealed too much of ourselves. Crouching under a window that faced the yard, I heard the neighbours saying how they'd never seen such a thing. A man asked my mom how she felt.

All she said was, "I'm starving."

~Shelter, Page 5-6

"Skanky freak," she said, and plunked down next to me. She was tall and black and had on a denim mini-skirt that barely reached the tops of her long grasshopper legs. Right away I knew she wasn't a girl, not because of the way she looked but because she acted too much like one, too much drama in her hands and hips.

~Club Orchid, page 36

"Your cigarette smells like chocolate," was what finally came out of my mouth. I hadn't eaten that day and every smell was candy.

~Club Orchid, Page 37

When I got up to throw everything away I noticed on the carpet a greasy black-and-white photo that looked to have ben torn from a yearbook. It was of a boy with a perfect glob Afro, wearing a sweater and tie. An American flag waved in the background, and the name was scratched out in ink. The more I stared at him, the more I saw the likeness. The long cheekbones gave it away. He was maybe in the sixth grade or seventh, his eyes already bored with life. He didn't smile. He looked straight into the camera and maybe years beyond it.

~Club Orchid, Page 40

Outside I stumbled past the ambulance, the fire trucks, the emergency people hovering around the other who was busy wiping down her child. The asphalt was a lace of sparkling diamonds -- beautiful, jagged doily for the crushed picnic basket, the soggy bib, the map stuck to the pavement with sticky blood. I searched for the janitor. I wanted to see where he would go. I even looked for him up in the sky, blinding myself until everything vanished.

~On the Bus, Page 95

currently reading Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun.

stark and pretty.

and i'm pretty damn cold sitting next to this window.

86 percent believe personal behavior should be included, 78 percent say travel history, 55 percent responded that nationality should be considered, and half indicated that personal appearance should be included. Four in ten said that race should be a factor.

From http://bit.ly/ezhqWC

Why does the last statistic seem to require a different style of wording? Perhaps I'm being sensitive, but nuances like these catch my attention and makes me wonder why they wrote what they did the way they did. America seems to vacillate between politically correct about the stereotyping that comes with race, and profiling, or something. I don't really know. Just feels that way...

Also, note the cup is designed such that empty mylar pretzel pellet bags stuffed in them to facilitate trash collection will not remain there, but will repeatedly and mesmerizingly creep back out and onto the tray table.

http://jetlagged.blogs.nytimes.com/

This article in particular gave me one of those secretive niggly feelings deep down inside.

http://jetlagged.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/27/the-uninvited-guest/

And if the point of travel, deep down, is to learn to see the world differently, then jet lag can have the same potential effect as the temples of Angkor, the ruins of Machu Picchu and the pyramids of Egypt put together.

...

The rules for handling jet lag are not so different from the ones on the back of your medication: do not operate heavy machinery while under its influence and do not make important decisions (unless, being a C.E.O. or head of state, you have to). Expect dizziness, headaches and tiredness; do not write checks, compute taxes or make any proposals of marriage in this state. Exposure to direct sunlight can be highly beneficial.

I wish I wrote this well.

But I'm half wondering how I'm gonna make it till 10PM tonight after waking up at 530AM. Nap? Like, right now?

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
--maya angelou

Sometimes I am very envious of he way this person writes.

http://www.iwrotethisforyou.me/2008/09/day-you-read-this.html

Today is one of those days when my body is strange. I don't quite understand why the process of cleansing and renewal causes such exhaustion that no amount of caffeine can fix. That's a lie, I do get it. I kind of just want to sleep the day away in a daze, and the weather is gorgeous despite it feeling damp and wet, gray and depressing. It feels like rain. It feels like inspiration.

Current Music: DBSK - kiss shite mama sayonara

Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence.

Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear.

Perhaps the action you take will be successful;

Perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow.

But any action is better than no action at all.

-- Norman Vincent Peale

Does insomnia always have a cause?

Accepting That Good Parents May Plant Bad Seeds

In summary, the reason for things may not always be what you think it is, sometimes things just are they way they are, sometimes there is no answer for something, perhaps there is no need for an answer for it right now.

Rather unrelated to the two above articles, I think I've gone through the three stages of denial, anger and acceptance for Hangeng's leaving. It's only a healthy way of dealing, right? Sometimes I think that I ought not get so emotionally involved in things that are so far away, but even if I may never have anything to do with the real persons involved, there are always things to be learned from other people's journeys.

'You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.' - Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird

Current Mood: calm

tracks go on forever

I want to take the Tokyo Metro out of Tokyo again, because the Japanese suburbs are so quiet and pretty.

list of changes

stay young at heart. have faith.

article on nytimes

tl;dr of it is that there is more to animal cruelty than you would think - it is one of those small indications of a larger problem. Also, there is an interesting commentary on the biological/neurological pathways of empathy near the end of the article that deals with sadistic behaviour and cruelty. There's a bit of 'people get fucked up but they still can be helped, especially when they are young'.

I'm pretty sure I used to think that one of my reasons against getting a pet would be that I was afraid I'd hurt it...

The Female Factor - In Sweden, the Men Can Have It All

In this new world of the sexes, some women complain that Swedish men are too politically correct even to flirt in a bar. And some men admit to occasional pangs of insecurity. “I know my wife expects me to take parental leave,” said a prominent radio journalist who recently took six months off with his third child and who preferred to remain anonymous. “But if I was on a lonely island with her and Tarzan, I hope she would still pick me.”

lol this.

dear my love, how are you? i have been thinking about you. i write this letter knowing it will never reach you. many days as cold as winter nights have passed since that time. my weakness and the way in which i hurt you. disappear into the darkness. i know we cannot turn back the clock and return. i believe that not meeting you signifies meeting my last love. i will never forget the tenderness you showed me. you live on in each new day. your memory brightens the sky. don't hate me, don't become sad because of me. that is all i ask. i opened the window today and saw a myriad of flowers blooming. i thank you from the bottom of my heart. thank you. to say goodbye is like being a small lost child again. goodbye.

perhaps all your foot-stomping

is setting off earthquakes elsewhere?

“

Human politics, from whispered hushes and distant crushes

mental fits breakin’ pencil tips and inkin’ brushes

simple rushes

”

Current Music: Butterfly Effect - Epik High

and we are so breakable, breakable girls and boys

Current Music: breakable - ingrid michaelson

"Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be."

"But now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like the watery ink on paper."

~Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden

Current Mood: calm

"If sadness is what happens when you turn your anger inwards, hope is what happens when you turn your happiness, outwards."

Words that moved my heart today.

make me a new heart

The hope of my redemption
is such that I believe that I am free
To confess would bring me no salvation
for I alone hold the power to forgive me

Of my acts, I will admit, I've no pretensions
I've no regrets for all the things that I have done
My faiths, to me, are as foundations
None has the right to judge my soul but me

There is no going back
No quarter now remains
No return for me, no sanctity
A single chance prevails
The fields behind laid waste
No doubt, no amends to make
at break of day
until the light fails
march ever on

Great are the paths of our creation
that have been made for the brave to see
The fools who would condemn this existence
are as lands to be vanquished and seized

~Precipice, VNV Nation

I realize I'm getting caught up in the details of the fabric and forgetting to look at the bigger picture.

Do your job, keep your cool, take it in your stride, think of what you need to do.

"One should strive to achieve; not sit in bitter regret." - VNV Nation

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: VNV Nation - Beloved

I love reading, but I torture myself sometimes by having to get up every two minutes to look up a word in a dictionary. It wouldn't be so painful if I weren't so cold, of course, leaving my pile of blankets makes me want to weep like a stupid baby and whine about how my laundry is not yet done because I need my pants.

But I have learned at curio cabinets are pretty things (perhaps meant to hold pretty things). Also, making a note to myself to read this wikipedia article about window blinds. It's like an odd motivation, but sometimes I wish for every single thing to have labels - to know the specific names of things, like some amusing and comical super power you only see in movies where the super hero is walking down the street and labels pop out in multi-colour and a variety of font. *insert witty line about some inappropriately named things*

I'm reading A home at the end of the world by Michael Cunningham, and its been really good so far. It has a particular haunting quality about it, slow but not forgettable, curling into the recesses of my mind, as if waiting for something.

"This is what you do. You make a future for yourself out of the raw material at hand."

Current Music: Be My Baby - Ivy

blurb

The coffee cup that has cooled down
a little is like a merry-go-round
It mimics our inertia

Let's kiss one more time, and
expose your secret
Beyond your tongue and mine,
there's the truth...

kiss twice, kiss me deadly,
アリス九號

January 2016

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delirium

is an acutely disturbed state of mind

Entries tagged with quotes

this is what I mean when I say I believe

miles from nowhere

(no subject)

ah-ha-ha.

a little nudge

That I love the rain.

my momma told me

the other side

fyi

"No one reads stories aloud, unless you are a child."

the animal cruelty syndrome

real tour 2000

call it what you want

and we are

little miss stupid

I will remember this

be my scientist.