Mo'men Alhoot

“Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you've been ruined.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“It sounds to me like you're being cruel to yourself."
After a moment, I said, "How can you be anything to your self? I mean, if you can be something to your self, then your self isn't, like, singular."
"You're deflecting." I just stared at her. "You're right that self isn't simple, Aza. Maybe it's not even singular. Self is a plurality, but pluralities can also be integrated, right? Think of a rainbow. It's one arc of light, but also seven differently colored arcs of light.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all?
It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful if accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle.
Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to wake up.
Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearranger of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentment of loss.”
― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

“الجمالُ الحزين له وقع علي القلب أشد من وقع الجمال الضاحك”
― Leo Tolstoy, آنا کارينينا