Cynthia

“Bind me to your will, bind me with these threads of sorrow, and gather me out of the afternoon where I have torn my soul on twenty monstrous altars, offering all things but myself.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

“She thought: This is how all life should be accepted, in desireless wonder, reaching out for nothing and thrusting nothing away, rejoicing in the different essence of each moment as it blazes into the present from the folded future. But she was under no illusions; for a life of such moments one needed a heart without roots, a spirit free in the wind, and empty hands. Once she had had them. She would never know them again. She had committed too much to earth.”
― Mary Renault, The Promise of Love

“When I opened my eyes, I saw nothing but the pool of nocturnal sky, for I was lying on my back with outstretched arms, face to face with that hatchery of stars. Only half awake, still unaware that those depths were sky, having no roof between those depths and me, no branches to screen them, no root to cling to, I was seized with vertigo and felt myself as if flung forth and plunging downward like a diver. But I did not fall. From nape to heel I discovered myself bound to earth. I felt a sort of appeasement in surrendering to it my weight. Gravitation had become as sovereign as love. The earth, I felt, was supporting my back, sustaining me, lifting me up, transporting me through the immense void of night.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars

“We have in fact only two certainties in this world—that we are not everything and that we will die. To be conscious of not being everything, as one is of being mortal, is nothing. But if we are without a narcotic, an unbreathable void reveals itself. I wanted to be everything, so that falling into this void, I might summon my courage and say to myself: “I am ashamed of having wanted to be everything, for I see now that it was to sleep.” From that moment begins a singular experience. The mind moves in a strange world where anguish and ecstasy coexist.”
― Georges Bataille, Inner Experience