lola

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

“Thus to get the princess, to live
with her joyfully and happily day in and day out (for it is also conceivable that
the knight of resignation might get the princess, but that his soul had discerned the
impossibility of their future happiness), thus to live joyfully and happily every
instant by virtue of the absurd, every instant to see the sword hanging over the
head of the beloved, and yet to find repose in the pain of resignation, but joy by
virtue of the absurd—this is marvellous.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

“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

“I saw the days of the year stretching ahead like a series of bright, white boxes, and separating one box from another was sleep, like a black shade. Only for me, the long perspective of shades that set off one box from the next day had suddenly snapped up, and I could see day after day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad, infinitely desolate avenue.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar