Liz

“The trouble with a secret life is that it is very frequently a secret from the person who lives it and not at all a secret for the people he encounters. He encounters, because he must encounter, those people who see his secrecy before they see anything else, and who drag these secrets out of him; sometimes with the intention of using them against him, sometimes with more benevolent intent; but, whatever the intent, the moment is awful and the accumulating revelation is an unspeakable anguish. The aim of the dreamer, after all, is merely to go on dreaming and not to be molested by the world. His dreams are his protection against the world. But the aims of life are antithetical to those of the dreamer, and the teeth of the world are sharp.”
― James Baldwin, Another Country

“Good poetry, like music or a sweet touch, can doctor us up, be an antidote for an hour or longer, help us to get dressed for another day--combat the blues enough to mount the horse again; and maybe even aid in laying down the insidious weight of some old grudge or deep-rooted anxiety. Herein enters Rumi.”
― Daniel Ladinsky, The Purity of Desire: 100 Poems Inspired by Rumi

“Better and happier those who, recognizing that everything is fictitious, write the novel before someone writes it for them and, like Machiavelli, don courtly garments to write in secret.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Your misconceptions veil the holy. The Princess is naked
beneath the surface of every form. Your boredom would
vanish if you had more of a clue about the Reality I know.”
― Rumi