Forough

“The only real escape from hell is to conquer it.”
― Scott Hawkins, The Library at Mount Char

“Like the shadow
I am
and
I am not”
― Jalaluddin Rumi, The Love Poems of Rumi

“I must have had some high object in life, for I feel unbounded strength within me. But I never discovered it and was carried away by the allurements of empty, un-rewarding passions. I was tempered in their flames and came out cold and hard as steel, but I'd lost forever that fire of noble endeavour, that finest flower of life. How many time since then have I been an axe in the hands of fate? Like an engine of execution, I've descended on the heads of the condemned, often without malice, but always without pity. My love has brought no one happiness, for I've never sacrificed a thing for those I've loved. I've loved for myself, for my own pleasure, I've only tried to satisfy a strange inner need. I've fed on their feelings, love, joys and sufferings, and always wanted more. I'm like a starving man who falls asleep exhausted and sees rich food and sparkling wines before him. He rapturously falls on these phantom gifts of the imagination and feels better, but the moment he wakes up his dream disappears and he's left more hungry and desperate than before.”
― Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time

“When you are not fed love on a silver spoon, you learn to lick it off knives.”
― Lauren Eden, Lioness Awakens