Mack > Mack's Quotes

“A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river
                    but then he’s still left
with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away
                                                                        but then he’s still left with his hands.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. So medicine, law, business, engineering... these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love... these are what we stay alive for.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has overflown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip. ”
― Bret Easton Ellis

“I wanted to explain myself to myself in an understandable way. I gave shape to my fears and made excuses. I varied my velocities, watched myselves sleep. Something's not right about what I'm doing but I'm still doing it-- living in the worst parts, ruining myself. My inner life is a sheet of black glass. If I fell through the floor I would keep falling.
The enormity of my desire disgusts me.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking, “I am falling to the floor crying,” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it — you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well.”
― Richard Siken

“Child, child, have patience and belief, for life is many days, and each present hour will pass away. Son, son, you have been mad and drunken, furious and wild, filled with hatred and despair, and all the dark confusions of the soul - but so have we. You found the earth too great for your one life, you found your brain and sinew smaller than the hunger and desire that fed on them - but it has been this way with all men. You have stumbled on in darkness, you have been pulled in opposite directions, you have faltered, you have missed the way, but, child, this is the chronicle of the earth. And now, because you have known madness and despair, and because you will grow desperate again before you come to evening, we who have stormed the ramparts of the furious earth and been hurled back, we who have been maddened by the unknowable and bitter mystery of love, we who have hungered after fame and savored all of life, the tumult, pain, and frenzy, and now sit quietly by our windows watching all that henceforth never more shall touch us - we call upon you to take heart, for we can swear to you that these things pass.”
― Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again

“The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.”
― Thomas Wolfe, God's Lonely Man

“You are allowed to take up space. Own who you are and what you want for yourself. Stop downplaying the things you care about, the hopes you have. Own your passions, your thoughts, your perceptions. Own your fire. Stop putting your worth in the hands of others; stop letting them decide your value. Own saying no, saying yes. Own your mood, your feelings. Own your plans, your path, your success.”
― Bianca Sparacino, The Strength In Our Scars

“I want to tell you this story without having to confess anything,
without having to say that I ran out into the street to prove something,
that he didn't love me,
that I wanted to be possessed, thrown over, that I wanted to have the wounds
nailed shut.
I want to tell you this story without having to be in it:
Max in the wrong clothes. Max at the party, drunk again.
Max in the kitchen, in refrigerator Ught, his hands around the neck of a beer.
Tell me we're dead and I'll love you
even more.
I'm surprised that I say it with feeling.
There's a thing in my stomach about this. A simple thing. The last rung.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“Both tears and sweat are salty.
but none of them are faulty.
the tears can get you somewhere,
the sweat will make you only wet.”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, Pierrot Love: When A Call From The Other Side Takes Its Own Side

“cause we don't hide,
We parade our pride!”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, Pierrot & Columbine

“A place in the sun, that's what I am aiming for... and who could ever ask for more?' -Columbine to Pierrot”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, Pierrot & Columbine

“Viver só de aparência mostra é muita carência!”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, Pierrot & Columbina (Amor de Pierrot Livro 1)

“Assim como a lua,
Que mostra apenas uma face,
Sou sua cara metade.
A vida nua e crua,
Requer um impasse,
Repleto de meias verdades'.- Pierrot a Columbina”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, Pierrot & Columbina (Amor de Pierrot Livro 1)

“When two tears fall
From each eye apart,
Yet they join after all
To form a sweetheart.”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, Pierrot Love: When A Call From The Other Side Takes Its Own Side

“I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more.”
― Maurice Sendak

“I need a father. I need a mother. I need some older, wiser being to cry to. I talk to God, but the sky is empty.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night. It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don't worry. It's all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don't know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever. Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect. We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It's a dream already ended. There's nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Portable Jack Kerouac

“I sleep. I dream. I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly.”
― Richard Siken

“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”
― Sarah Williams