Trotsig

“Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is...and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be...and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart...no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn't matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them.”
― Robert Heinlein

“The life-loving, smart,
good-hearted dead
don't want forty days of mourning
or say, "After me the deluge!"
Leaving behind some helpful things
- a few words, a tree, a smile -
each gets up and goes
and does not burden the living
with the darkness of the tomb,
carrying the weight
of his stone all alone.
And because they ask for nothing
from the living,
it's as if they aren't dead...

- Conversation with Dead Nezval”
― Nâzım Hikmet, Poems of Nazım Hikmet

“We cannot allow anything to come between us and our spirituality, or between us and our living process. If we do, we shall destroy ourselves and those around us.”
― Anne Wilson Schaef, When Society Becomes an Addict: An Incisive Analysis of the System of Addiction in Western Society

“people are brought into our path for a reason. There is always something to be taught or to be learned, either for one of you or for both. And”
― Laura Lynne Jackson, The Light Between Us: Stories from Heaven, Lessons for the Living