Mariya

“For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves not others, was possible only away from the public: the moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies. Sabina despised literature in which people give away all kinds of intimate secrets about themselves and their friends. A man who loses his privacy loses everything, Sabina thought. And a man who gives it up on his own free will is a monster. That is why Sabina did not suffer in the least from having to keep her love a secret. On the contrary, only by doing so could she live the truth.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“If you have attempted to fit whatever mold and failed to do so, you are probably lucky. You may be an exile of some sort, but you have sheltered your soul.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves

“Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“And I am absolutely intellectually able to agree, yes, all of this great crashing wave of negative feeling is not actually being caused by the things I am pinning it to. This is something generated by my biochemistry, grown in my basal brain and my liver and my gut and let loose to roam like a faceless beast about my body until it reaches my cognitive centres, which look around for the worry du jour and pin that mask on it. I know that, while I have real problems in the world, they are not causing the way I feel within myself, this crushing weight, these sudden attacks of clenching fear, the shakes, the wrenching vertiginous horror that doubles me over. These feelings are just recruiting allies of convenience from my rational mind, like a mob lifting up a momentary demagogue who may be discarded a moment later in favour of a better. Even in the grip of my feelings I can still acknowledge all this, and it doesn’t help. Know thyself, the wise man wrote, and yet I know myself, none better, and the knowledge gives me no power.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Elder Race