kahaani ❦

“Because it begins to seem to me at such times that I am incapable of beginning a life in real life, because it has seemed to me that I have lost all touch, all instinct for the actual, the real; because at last I have cursed myself; because after my fantastic nights I have moments of returning sobriety, which are awful! Meanwhile, you hear the whirl and roar of the crowd in the vortex of life around you; you hear, you see, men living in reality; you see that life for them is not forbidden, that their life does not float away like a dream, like a vision; that their life is being eternally renewed, eternally youthful, and not one hour of it is the same as another; while fancy is so spiritless, monotonous to vulgarity and easily scared, the slave of shadows, of the idea, the slave of the first cloud that shrouds the sun... One feels that this inexhaustible fancy is weary at last and worn out with continual exercise, because one is growing into manhood, outgrowing one's old ideals: they are being shattered into fragments, into dust; if there is no other life one must build one up from the fragments. And meanwhile the soul longs and craves for something else! And in vain the dreamer rakes over his old dreams, as though seeking a spark among the embers, to fan them into flame, to warm his chilled heart by the rekindled fire, and to rouse up in it again all that was so sweet, that touched his heart, that set his blood boiling, drew tears from his eyes, and so luxuriously deceived him!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

“I spent my life folded between the pages of books.
In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“sometimes i feel more like a house than a person
with the way i decorate my body and my face
to hide damaged walls and empty spaces;
my heart is more like a door with changed locks
because i've made multiple keys for people
who walked all over me with filthy shoes,
people who said they could live here,
but they were just passing through.
i hope my eyes are not windows,
because i fear what the world might see—
all of my flaws and insecurities on display
like a coffee table or some shoddy love seat.
sometimes i swear i left the oven on and forgot
because my mind feels like a smoke detector
with the way my apprehension never calms.
i smell smoke, but i can't see it;
i'm told things are never as bad as i make them,
but every wildfire starts with a spark
and it's easy to burn when you're a house made of straw.”
― t. e. talbott, melancholia in the milky way

“Am I inconsequential to it all, a random, forgettable moment in your delicate, pastel existence?”
― John Casey, Raw Thoughts