March 2012
36 posts
“It’s a great role. With Daisy I think her biggest problem is that she feels very...”
– Carey Mulligan on her role in The Great Gatsby
2 tags
No one ever applauds me when I make it through those days, when the sky is pressing upon my chest and the morning comes down like a knife missing me by inches…it is so hard to place meaning behind those small everyday actions, getting out of bed—not like with written actions—and it is so hard for me to do something simply because it is expected…I don’t mean that...
1 tag
Anne Frank's last diary entry
“A bundle of contradictions” was the end of my previous letter and is the beginning of this one. Can you please tell me exactly what “a bundle of contradictions” is? What does “contradiction” mean? Like so many words, it can be interpreted in two ways: a contradiction imposed from without and one imposed from within. The former means not accepting other people’s opinions, always knowing best,...
3 tags
I need purpose. I need it really badly, can hardly exist without it. I don’t work hard unless I see the inherent value in it, the place where it could take me. I like to know the exact results my actions could have before I bother dealing with them, you know? I need to know I’m going somewhere, working for something. When that rug is pulled out from under me, I collapse and get all...
“Pella nodded. She knew the Emerson riff by heart, but Mike clearly wanted to...”
– Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding
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Some days I swear there’s just a gaping hole where my brain used to be. It’s like I’m getting younger instead of older.
My room is sweltering.
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“For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, just notes, a myriad of...”
– Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
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I took the boy home with me because I liked his shoes.
I’d never seen them in real life before, only in pictures. They were ’50s boots, oddly feminine and heeled and an oily black color, boots the Beatles would wear when they liked alcohol more than marijuana.
I told him I liked his shoes and to sit on the bed if he wanted. He said thanks and okay. I was chewing gum, and it was...
“It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at...”
– Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
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Today, maybe, was the first day Today, maybe, was the last
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She stood on the wrong platform
Waiting for the wrong train
She would travel through the tunnel backwards instead of forwards
It hailed that night
Like golf balls
She closed her eyes
It’s simple
It’s not
She bought some extra time in a vending machine
And on the television
Crackling like candy wrappers
She watched a tornado
She watched it kill a lot of people,
Uproot their houses
She lived...
The Egg by Andy Weir
You were on your way home when you died.
It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.
And that’s when you met me.
“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”
“You died,” I...
Why is writing so scary all of a sudden?
1 tag
Writing is like finding cracks in your skull
and instead of gluing them shut or being gentler
you pry and probe them wider
try to understand why these fault lines formed
in the first place.
2 tags
“Literature could turn you into an asshole; he’d learned that teaching...”
– Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding
Anonymous asked: What is your biggest fear? What is the most vivid memory from your childhood?
Anonymous asked: What do you think of the current education system?
1 tag
Do you ever just try and see where your mind goes? Just follow it, like, mindlessly?
Are you ever surprised? Horrified, even? How fast and how far you can travel in the space between your ears?
I mean space in terms of space, by the way. The ever-expanding matter that composes all of the empty spots in the universe, although space is something, something very much there, so I guess in that way...
““Do you feel alone right now?”
“Oh…I dunno. I mean,...”
– Donnie Darko
1 tag
T. nodded. “Come over here,” he said, “and look.” Out of both pockets he drew bundles of pound notes. “Old Misery’s savings,” he said. “Mike ripped out the mattress, but he missed them.”
“What are you going to do? Share them?”
“We aren’t thieves,” T. said. “Nobody’s going to steal anything from this house. I kept these for you and me—a celebration.” He knelt down on the floor and counted them...
excerpt from E Unibus Pluram - David Foster...
The next real literary “rebels” in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip...
Reader: Dear Mr. Snicket, What is the best way to keep a secret?
Lemony Snicket: Tell it to everyone you know, but pretend you are kidding.
pavorst:
If we let an ant define our greatness, we are giants beyond defeat. If we let the stars define us, we are dull whispers.
It is a matter of which we choose.
It’s really hard to create when you’re afraid. So I’m trying to wean all this fear and self-hatred and general negativity out of me. I’m trying. It’s not working, but I’m trying.
1 tag
I’m sorry that something inside me shut off and I don’t know where it is so I can’t find a way to turn it back on
Every day I get more and more boring and my feet get heavier and more goes wrong
And it’s like I’m at the grocery store trying to pick up the right words but they’re all bruised in ways you can’t even cut around
Nobody makes me happy...
msjamiekeiles:
i actually have no idea what to make of this rihanna thing.
like, it broke my feminism.
