"there’s a house across the river

but alas, i cannot swim

and a garden of such beauty

that the flowers seem to grin

there’s a house across the river

but alas, i cannot swim

i’ll live my life regretting that i never jumped in."

— Laura Marling

I am one of the searchers. There are, I believe, millions of us. We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content. We continue to explore life, hoping to uncover its ultimate secret. We continue to explore ourselves, hoping to understand. We like to walk along the beach, we are drawn by the ocean, taken by its power, its unceasing motion, its mystery and unspeakable beauty. We like forests and mountains, deserts and hidden rivers, and the lonely cities as well. Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter. To share our sadness with one we love is perhaps as great a joy as we can know — unless it be to share our laughter.

We searchers are ambitious only for life itself, for everything beautiful it can provide. Most of all we love and want to be loved. We want to live in a relationship that will not impede our wandering, nor prevent our search, nor lock us in prison walls; that will take us for what little we have to give. We do not want to prove ourselves to another or compete for love.

For wanderers, dreamers, and lovers, for lonely men and women who dare to ask of life everything good and beautiful. It is for those who are too gentle to live among wolves.

James Kavanaugh

"I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting."

Franny and Zooey; J.D. Salinger

“She often could not articulate her thoughts; they seemed like objects glimpsed peripherally, skittish and ungraspable, splinters and fragments that would not add up to much if bundled together; they refused to stand still for examination. For this reason, she was largely silent.” 

Katherine Min, After The Falls

Every little trifle, for some reason, does seem incalculably important today and when you say of a thing that “nothing hangs on it” it sounds like blasphemy. There’s never any knowing - how am I to put it? - which of our actions, which of our idlenesses won’t have things hanging on it for ever.”

E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“did you ever, in that wonderland wilderness of adolesence, ever, quite unexpectedly, see something—a dusk sky, a wild bird, a landscape—so exquisite terror touched you at the bone? and you are afraid, terribly afraid the smallest movement, a leaf, say, turning in the wind, will shatter all? that is, i think, the way love is, or should be: one lives in beautiful terror.”

Truman Capote

"So why go places with guys you can’t talk to? You’ll never meet a soul that way — not the sort you want to meet. Better to stay in your garret reading than to go from one party to another. Face it, kid: unless you can be yourself, you won’t stay with anyone for long. You’ve got to be able to talk. That’s tough. But spend your nights learning, so you’ll have something to say. Something the “attractive intelligent man” will want to listen to."

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

" i just have to come face-to-face with the fact that i am not gifted. you know, i can appreciate art and i love music, but… it’s sad really, because i feel like i have a lot to express and i am not gifted. 

(vicky christina barcelona)

“It was almost reckless how vulnerable she allowed herself to be; you couldn’t help but hate her for doing that to herself, and at the same time hate yourself for giving in to it, and underneath all of that, despite your hate for her, couldn’t help but love her.”
— Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

I’ve crossed some kind of invisible line. I feel as if I’ve come to a place I never thought I’d have to come to. And I don’t know how I got here. It’s a strange place. It’s a place where a little harmless dreaming and then some sleepy, early-morning talk has led me into considerations of death and annihilation.”
Raymond Carver, Where I’m Calling From: New and Selected Stories