One of my favorite plot points of any story and a quote I think about frequently in today's climate

“The new light seems to pour from all directions across the skull; the whole universe falls into pattern like the stray pieces in a jigsaw puzzle assembled by magic at one stroke. There is an answer to every question: doubts and conflicts are a matter of the tortured past - a past already remote, when one had lived in dismal ignorance in the tasteless, colourless world of those who don’t know. Nothing henceforth can disturb the convert’s inner peace and serenity — except the occasional fear of losing faith again, losing thereby what alone makes life worth living, and falling back into the outer darkness, where there is is wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

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NIHILIST, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi.

OATH, n. In law, a solemn appeal to the Deity, made binding upon the conscience by a penalty for perjury.

NOVEMBER, n. The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.

Oh, to be loved.

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Is it possible that you do not know that comparisons of wit with wit, valour with valour, beauty with beauty, birth with birth, are always odious and unwelcome?

milk and honey by rupi kaur

just finished this and that quote hit different. feels like permission to not be okay with being neutral about everything, if that makes sense? does anyone else get that from haig's writing where it's like he just gets the mess of existing as a person

“Since the stars are pure perception, are purely visible without any possibility of becoming tangible, they need constantly to demonstrate their reality, if possible every night. That is the paradox of an imaginary system which needs to be real in order to generate all its images.

Now, look at our own black, immutable sky, our rock. It’s exactly the same. Points of darkness replace points of light. It is we who are the stars, the living memory of our lives, lived without days or nights on the margins of time. Meaning continues to exist however, whether or not there is a God or a sky. It may be that to go on believing in ourselves demands an extra dose of energy from us, but we do not regret it. We dream a lot, because we sleep so much.“

“Forgetfulness heals everything and song is the most beautiful manner of forgetting, for in song man feels only what he loves.”

The environmental descriptions in the book are also flooring. I posted my favorite passage in [r/ProsePorn](r/ProsePorn)

Each event spoke with a cryptic tongue. And the moments of living slowly revealed their coded meanings. There was the wonder I felt when I first saw a brace of mountainlike, spotted, black-and-white horses clapping down a dusty road through clouds of powdered clay.

There was the delight I caught in seeing long straight rows of red and green vegetables stretching away in the sun to the bright horizon.

There was the faint, cool kiss of sensuality when dew came on to my cheeks and shins as I ran down the wet green garden paths in the early morning.

There was the vague sense of the infinite as I looked down upon the yellow, dreaming waters of the Mississippi River from the verdant bluffs of Natchez.

There were the echoes of nostalgia I heard in the crying strings of wild geese winging south against a bleak, autumn sky.

There was the tantalizing melancholy in the tingling scent of burning hickory wood.

There was the teasing and impossible desire to imitate the petty pride of sparrows wallowing and flouncing in the red dust of country roads.

There was the yearning for identification loosed in me by the sight of a solitary ant carrying a burden upon a mysterious journey.

There was the disdain that filled me as I tortured a delicate, blue-pink crawfish that huddled fearfully in the mudsill of a rusty tin can.

There was the aching glory in masses of clouds burning gold and purple from an invisible sun.

There was the liquid alarm I saw in the blood-red glare of the sun's afterglow mirrored in the squared panes of whitewashed frame houses.

There was the languor I felt when I heard green leaves rustling with a rainlike sound.

There was the incomprehensible secret embodied in a whitish toadstool hiding in the dark shade of a rotting log.

There was the experience of feeling death without dying that came from watching a chicken leap about blindly after its neck had been snapped by a quick twist of my father's wrist.

There was the great joke I felt God had played on cats and dogs by making them lap their milk and water with their tongues.

There was the thirst I had when I watched clear, sweet juice trickle from sugar cane being crushed.

There was the hot panic that welled up in my throat and swept through my blood when I first saw the lazy, limp coils of a blue-skinned snake sleeping in the sun.

There was the speechless astonishment of seeing a hog stabbed through the heart, dipped into boiling water, scraped, split open, gutted, and strung up gaping and bloody.

There was the love I had for the mute regality of tall, moss-clad oaks.

There was the hint of cosmic cruelty I felt when I saw the curved timbers of a wooden shack that had been warped in the summer sun.

There was the saliva that formed in my mouth whenever I smelt clay dust potted with fresh rain.

There was the cloudy notion of hunger when I breathed the odor of new-cut, bleeding grass.

And there was the quiet terror that suffused my senses when vast hazes of gold washed earthward from star-heavy skies on silent nights...

What is the most powerful quotes you've ever read in a book?

"Was he an animal if music could captivate him so?"

Kafka, Franz. “The Metamorphosis.” Classic Horror Tales, Canterbury Classics, 2015, pp. 412–451.

I swear books are designed to make you forget you have a bedtime. You tell yourself "one more chapter" at 2am and suddenly it's 5am and you're already halfway through the next one. What books have absolutely destroyed your sleep schedule?

As I was reading my book “ blue sisters “ I passed by this quote and I really liked how it described pain. As someone studying medicine and hoping to become a doctor one day  it’s very important to understand what pain is, and not just the mechanism behind this pain and what caused it but also how is it making the person feel, how is it affecting their life. Well it’s not an easy thing since we study abt many types of diseases that each of them has different type of pain and struggle … physical pain, mental pain etc , so it’s impossible to relate or fully understand all these types of pain but at least we should try to listen to these patients describing their pain not just to rate it from 1 to 10 . And to give ourselves the time and energy needed to acknowledge their pain and show them real empathy.