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Pain is easy; pain is something with which I am familiar.
“Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life… You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.”
― The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones
― The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones
“Fear is flooding over me, like water.
The living know nothing. Teach me, dead ones, how to die without fear, or at least without horror. Because death is senseless, as is life.”
― Death and the Dervish
The living know nothing. Teach me, dead ones, how to die without fear, or at least without horror. Because death is senseless, as is life.”
― Death and the Dervish
“Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”
― Letters to a Young Poet
― Letters to a Young Poet
“It is not until you change your identity to match your life blueprint that you will understand why everything in the past never worked.”
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“Bailey, a former prosecutor, attacked her credibility scattershot, an approach he would use throughout the trial, particularly with female witnesses. ...
He accused her, that is--without coming out and saying it--of being a certain kind of woman: conceited, disingenuous, and dissatisfied. The universal misogynist caricature.
I'd never gone in for academic gender theories, but Bailey's cross-examination strategy--with Farrar and other women to come--convinced me that the culture of criminal justice has a fundamentally masculine tilt. Repeatedly, in a manner that I suspected was typical in modern courtrooms, he portrayed the female mind as intrinsically unreliable, ruled by emotion, immune to logic, prone to pettiness, swayed by lust, and corrupted by vanity. It rarely spoke plainly. It was seldom candid. It was composed of layers of hidden agendas. It put up a front, behind which was another front. It either aimed to please or to conceal, which were often the same thing. The only way to get the truth from it was to push and prod until it snapped. Make it angry. Make it cry.”
― Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade
He accused her, that is--without coming out and saying it--of being a certain kind of woman: conceited, disingenuous, and dissatisfied. The universal misogynist caricature.
I'd never gone in for academic gender theories, but Bailey's cross-examination strategy--with Farrar and other women to come--convinced me that the culture of criminal justice has a fundamentally masculine tilt. Repeatedly, in a manner that I suspected was typical in modern courtrooms, he portrayed the female mind as intrinsically unreliable, ruled by emotion, immune to logic, prone to pettiness, swayed by lust, and corrupted by vanity. It rarely spoke plainly. It was seldom candid. It was composed of layers of hidden agendas. It put up a front, behind which was another front. It either aimed to please or to conceal, which were often the same thing. The only way to get the truth from it was to push and prod until it snapped. Make it angry. Make it cry.”
― Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade
Aqsa’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Aqsa’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
300 books
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9 friends
588 books
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27 friends
59 books
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131 friends
138 books
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236 friends
133 books
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16 friends
4 books
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3 friends
3 books
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31 friends
3 books
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42 friends
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