Portrait of an African man
"This is real. This life. We’re really here - this is really happening. Suffering is real. When you hurt people, it’s real."
— Zadie Smith, from Selected Prose: “On Beauty: A Novel,” (via violentwavesofemotion)
"I will open your eyes to what will make you weep hot tears."
— Michelangelo, from a letter Giovan Simone written c. June 1505
(via violentwavesofemotion)
"All forms of love, suffering, and madness. He [the poet] searches himself. He exhausts all poisons in himself and keeps only their quintessences."
— Arthur Rimbaud, from a letter to Paul Demeny c. May 1871 (via violentwavesofemotion)
"A solitude of sea,
A solitude of death,"
— Emily Dickinson, from The Collected Poems; “XXV,”
(via violentwavesofemotion)
"She answered, ‘I don’t want worship. I want understanding.’"
— Anaïs Nin, from The Diary of Anaïs Nin: Vol. 1, 1931-1934 (via sheholdsyoucaptivated)
"I have a new plan: to go mad."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, in a letter to his brother Michael (via minima–moralia)