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Elyse Kassa
https://elysesorbit.substack.com
“The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful ... Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.”
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“The legs, for example, of that chair--how miraculous their tubularity, how supernatural their polished smoothness! I spent several minutes--or was it several centuries?--not merely gazing at those bamboo legs, but actually being them---or rather being myself in them; or, to be still more accurate (for "I" was not involved in the case, nor in a certain sense were "they") being my Not-self in the Not-self which was the chair.”
― The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell
― The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell
“Everyone needs a place. It shouldn't be inside of someone else.”
―
―
“If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand.”
― Crush
― Crush
“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
―
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
―
Elyse’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Elyse’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
320 books
|
239 friends
23 books
|
9 friends
69 books
|
25 friends
0 books
|
9 friends
0 books
|
72 friends
46 books
|
3 friends
3 books
|
6 friends
0 books
|
30 friends
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Art, Classics, Contemporary, Fiction, Gay and Lesbian, History, Music, Non-fiction, Philosophy, Poetry, Religion, Spirituality, and essays
Polls voted on by Elyse
Lists liked by Elyse
