cvxn

This is an important thing to know about life.

(Source: think-different-think-freely)

wilwheaton:

Somebody made this, and now I have something in both of my eyes.

(via The Wisdom of Wil - Imgur)

amandaonwriting:

Literary Birthday - 31 March

Happy Birthday, John Fowles, born 31 March 1926, died 5 November 2005

Top 12 John Fowles Quotes

1. There are only two races on this planet - the intelligent and the stupid.
2. There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be.
3. The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself.
4. We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.
5. You may think novelists always have fixed plans to which they work, so that the future predicted by Chapter One is always inexorably the actuality of Chapter Thirteen. But novelists write for countless different reasons: for money, for fame, for reviewers, for parents, for friends, for loved ones; for vanity, for pride, for curiosity, for amusement: as skilled furniture makers enjoy making furniture, as drunkards like drinking, as judges like judging, as Sicilians like emptying a shotgun into an enemy’s back. I could fill a book with reasons, and they would all be true, though not true of all. Only one same reason is shared by all of us: we wish to create worlds as real as, but other than the world that is. Or was. This is why we cannot plan. We know a world is an organism, not a machine.
6. There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.
7. That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good.
8. Wealth is a monster. It takes a month to learn to control it financially. And many years to learn to control it psychologically.
9. I think all the arts draw on a nostalgia or longing for a better world—at root a better metaphysical condition—than the one that is. Self-destructive, I don’t know, but certainly we are all victims of some form of manic depression. That is the price of being what we are. I would never choose—even if I could!—to be a more “normal” human being; I would never choose something without that emotional cost, severe though it can become.
10. Writing novels is a time-consuming, psyche-consuming business. I mean I don’t think a good teacher actually would be likely to write good novels.
11. What interests me about novelists as a species is the obsessiveness of the activity, the fact that novelists have to go on writing. I think that probably must come from a sense of the irrecoverable. In every novelist’s life there is some more acute sense of loss than with other people, and I suppose I must have felt that. I didn’t realize it, I suppose, till the last ten or fifteen years. In fact you have to write novels to begin to understand this. There’s a kind of backwardness in the novel…an attempt to get back to a lost world.
12. If a novelist isn’t in exile I suspect he’d be in trouble.

Fowles was an English novelist influenced by both Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. He is best known for The Magus and The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Fowles was named by The Times newspaper as one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.

Source for Image

by Amanda Patterson for Writers Write

soupsoup:

“You go to a cafe and you bring a copy of Sartre and Le Monde. There’s a cute dog under the table next to you. So after you read the news and the philosophy, you may pet the dog, flirt with someone at another table, and talk about some trivial gossip. All these things are part of being human. You don’t become stupid when you turn away from the philosophy and pet the dog. People are complex and multifaceted. When you talk to people who say it dumbs down the audience to have cute animals, the truth is nobody has a choice: because Facebook and Twitter are perfect Paris cafes.” - Jonah Peretti

Relevant to my interests/GPOY/Spirit Animal/Words to live by

(EDIT- PS: did you hear that? We’re in Paris, y’all!!)

saloandseverine:

Baisers volés (Stolen Kisses), François Truffaut, 1968

GPOY. (Sometimes I want to know, and sometimes I think “fuck them! Who cares what they think.”)

wilwheaton:

kat-howard:

elysemarshall:

annajarzab:

I like this.

I like this, too.

Wonderful. I want to memorize this.

This is amazing.

(Source: finnualabutler)

thepiratefuture:

For awhile each of the days counted towards something worse and worse. I both had it happen and let it happen to me. The lights will go on, with or without you, the lights never go away. Countless others ensure so, their livelihood depends on it. Whether I wished those to go away or otherwise.

But I also firmly and fully believe we each take away exactly what we need from everything. Not an ounce more, not a sliver less, and not a moment too late nor a bit too soon. You take away exactly what you need to say enough.

So I got full, one day, of all the wishing. Got full of the darkness. Got full of the nothing. And I set about change.

They tell you need drugs, they tell you it’s therapy, they tell you it’s the environment, they tell you it’s a lot of things because it is really a lot of things. But the easiest isn’t just a pill, the easiest is just change.

Fuck the inability to change, change.

Then take that change and maintain, that’s the hardest. Maintain. Every single day. And no drugs man ever made can help you keep change, it is rather a constant reminder of the fight you have to commit every single day to count towards something good.

But do it once, do it twice, do it three times, then four, and never stop. And one day you wake up and look at the mirror and find someone not you. Someone that’s okay. And then those lights are instead magical, enough to invite you out again.

That’s what depression feels like. And it’s sad but if you don’t have it, it’s sadder that you never get an opportunity to change for the better. You don’t push, you don’t get better. Life is only a bit more interesting when you make an effort.

(Source: joshuawoods)

luckyshirt:

thedarklawyer:

I don’t mean to dishonor the other stories here. But there is one I wanted to add.

A good portion of my pro-bono work is defending abused children. It’s a cause close to my heart.  In the course of my work I met a man who was an adult survivor. You wouldn’t have known it looking at him. He was this gigantic Polynesian guy. Wild curly hair. I think of him every time I see Khal Drogo on GoT. He was counseling some of the little kids, and doing a fantastic job of it.

I visited his home to get his opinion on something and I noticed a little toy on his desk. It was Trolley. Naturally curious, I asked him about it.

This is what he told me:

“The most dangerous time for me was in the afternoon when my mother got tired and irritable. Like clockwork. Now, she liked to beat me in discreet places so my father wouldn’t see the bruises. That particular day she went for the legs. Not uncommon for her. I was knocked down and couldn’t get back up. Also not uncommon. She gave me one last kick, the one I had come to learn meant ‘I’m done now’. Then she left me there upstairs, face in the carpet, alone. I tried to get up, but couldn’t. So I dragged myself, arm over arm, to the television, climbed up the tv cabinet and turned on the tv. 

“And there was Mr. Rogers. It was the end of the show and he was having a quiet, calm conversation with those hundreds of kids. In that moment, he seemed to look me in the eye when he said ‘And I like you just for being you’. In that moment, it was like he was reaching across time and space to say these words to me when I needed them most.

“It was like the hand of god, if you’re into that kind of thing. It hit me in the soul. I was a miserable little kid. I was sure I was a horrible person. I was sure I deserved every last moment of abuse, every blow, every bad name. I was sure I earned it, sure I didn’t deserve better. I *knew* all of these things … until that moment. If this man, who I hadn’t even met, liked me just for being me, then I couldn’t be all bad. Then maybe someone could love me, even if it wasn’t my mom.

“It gave me hope. If that nice man liked me, then I wasn’t a monster. I was worth fighting for. From that day on, his words were like a secret fortress in my heart. No matter how broken I was, no matter how much it hurt or what was done to me, I could remember his words, get back on my feet, and go on for another day.

“That’s why I keep Trolley there. To remind me that, no matter how terrible things look, someone who had never met me liked me just for being me, and that makes even the worst day worth it to me. I know how stupid it sounds, but Mr. Rogers saved my life.”

The next time I saw him, he was talking to one of my little clients. When they were done with their session, he helped her out of her chair, took both of her hands, looked her in the eyes and said: “And remember, I like you just for being you.” 

That, to me, is Mr. Rogers’ most powerful legacy. All of the little lives he changed and made better with simple and sincere words of love and kindness.

Like I said.