Mads ʅʕ•ᴥ•ʔʃ マディ Heggen

“I found myself taking more risks, because failure had a second life — it could spin a yarn. There was an agency in the retelling, in the self-deprecation and of course self-mythologizing. Memoir is how you groom yourself. Memoir is drag.”
― Jeremy Atherton Lin, Gay Bar: Why We Went Out

“This is trouble with you. You think you want, you don't think you want–always back and forth. Me, when I want, it is with whole heart. I look at wanted thing with eyes straight on. But you! Neither here nor there. Your looking always crooked, from side of eye. It has no power to hold. So wanted thing, it slip away from you.”
― Ruth Ozeki, My Year of Meats

“I left you to make you understand my mystery. Do not believe others will die, not you. It is not for that I'm your friend. By laying myself on the pyre, I became divine. I have wrestled with Thanatos knee to knee, and I know how death is vanquished. Man's immortality is not to live forever, for that wish is born of fear. Each moment free from fear, makes a man immortal.”
― Mary Renault, Fire from Heaven

“Fame has taken the place of religion in the 21st century. The Beyoncés and the Brangelinas of our world filling the void left by the gods and heroes of antiquity. But like most cliches, there's an element of truth to it. And the gods of old were merciless. For every Theseus who slays the Minotaur and returns home in triumph, there's an Ariadne abandoned on the isles of Naxos. There's an Aegeus, casting himself into the ocean at the sight of a black sail...In another life, I like to think that Luc O'Donnell and I might've worked out. In the short time I knew him, I saw a man with an endless potential trapped in a maze he couldn't even name. And from time to time, I think how many tens of thousands like him there must be in the world. Insignificant on a planet of billions, but a staggering number when considered as a whole. All stumbling about, blinded by reflected glory, never knowing where to step, or what to trust. Blessed and cursed by the Midas touch of our digital era divinity.”
― Alexis Hall, Boyfriend Material