On Happiness

"Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand."

(Aldous Huxley, Brave New World)

The Color Purple

One glimpse of life, which is not always filled with pink happenings or puffy people...
This is LIFE.
And this is a masterpiece.

Bright Star

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

(John Keats - Bright Star)

PS: "I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain."

On Settling

“Some people are settling down, some people are settling and some people refuse to settle for anything less than butterflies.”

(Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City)

Birthday Revelation

Oh, my friend, I'm older... But am I any wiser? I do wish I knew that...

Welcome, 23! And guess what, you'll be as fabulous as 22 or more!

Les poupées russes

Xavier : "If I think about all the girls I've known or slept with or just desired, they're like a bunch of Russian dolls. We spend our lives playing the game dying to know who'll be the last, the teeny-tiny one hidden inside all the others. You can't just get to her right away. You have to follow the progression. You have to open them one by one wondering, 'Is she the last one?'"

(Les poupées russes)

What Do You Want?

"So it's not gonna be easy. It's gonna be really hard. And we're gonna have to work at this every day, but I want to do that, because I want you. I want all of you, forever, you and me, every day. Will you do something for me? Please? Will you just picture your life for me? 30 years from now, 40 years from now, what's it look like? If it's with that guy, go! Go! I lost you once, I think I could do it again, if I thought it's what you really wanted. But don't you take the easy way out."

(The Notebook)

Forever Young

"In some ways we grow up; we have families… we get married, divorced… but for the most part we still have the same problems that we did when we were fifteen. No matter how much we grow taller, grow older, we are still forever stumbling… forever wondering, forever… young.

There comes a point in your life, when you're officially an adult. Suddenly, you're old enough to vote, drink and engage in other adult activities. Suddenly, people expect you to be responsible, serious, a grown-up. We get taller, we get older. But do we ever really grow up?"

(GA, s04, ep08)

Written On The Body (1)

"Cheating is easy. There's no swank to infidelity. To borrow against the trust someone has placed in you costs nothing at first. You get away with it, you take a little more and a little more until there is no more to draw on. Oddly, your hands should be full with all that taking but when you open them there's nothing there."

(Jeanette Winterson - Written on the body)

The History of Love

"The first language humans had was gestures. There was nothing primitive about this language that flowed from people’s hands, nothing we say now that could not be said in the endless array of movements possible with the fine bones of the fingers and wrists. The gestures were complex and subtle, involving a delicacy of motion that has since been lost completely.

During the Age of Silence, people communicated more, not less. Basic survival demanded that the hands were almost never still, and so it was only during sleep (and sometimes not even then) that people were not saying something or other. No distinction was made between the gestures of language and the gestures of life. The labor of building a house, say, or preparing a meal was no less an expression than making the sign for I love you or I feel serious. When a hand was used to shield one’s face when frightened by a loud noise something was being said, and when fingers were used to pick up what someone else had dropped something was being said; and even when the hands were at rest, that, too, was saying something. Naturally, there were misunderstandings. There were times when a finger might have been lifted to scratch a nose, and if casual eye contact was made with one’s lover just then, the lover might accidentally take it to be the gesture, not at all dissimilar, for ‘Now I realize I was wrong to love you’. These mistakes were heartbreaking. And yet, because people knew how easily they could happen, because they didn’t go round with the illusion that they understood perfectly the things other people said, they were used to interrupting each other to ask if they’d understood correctly. Sometimes these misunderstandings were even desirable, since they gave people a reason to say, ‘Forgive me’, I was only scratching my nose. Of course I know I’ve always been right to love you. Because of the frequency of these mistakes, over time the gesture for asking forgiveness evolved into the simplest form. Just to open your palm was to say: Forgive me."

(taken from "The History of Love" - Nicole Krauss)