Thomas Mann, "Essays of Three Decades"

A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

Kurt Vonnegut, "Mother Night"

Be careful who you pretend to be, because you are who you pretend to be.

Michaela Coel on "Chewing Gum" in Time

I don't think we should be presentable or present ourselves for the sake of others.

Toni Morrison, "Song of Solomon"

If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.

Joy Harjo, "This Morning I Pray for My Enemies" (1951)

…
The door to the mind should only open from the heart.
An enemy who gets in, risks the dangers of becoming a friend.

Aristotle

We envy those who are near us in time, place, age, or reputation…those whose possession of or success in a thing is a reproach to us: these are our neighbors and equals; for it is clear that it is our own fault we have missed the good thing in question.

Seneca

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. 

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

Oysters open completely when the moon is full; and when the crab sees one, it throws a piece of stone or seaweed into it and the oyster cannot close again so that it serves the crab for meat. Such is the fate of him who opens his mouth too much and thereby puts himself at the mercy of the listener.

#twitter

Cells#5 | Atsuko Hatano [for the first time posting music]

https://atsukohatano.bandcamp.com/album/cells-5

Oliver Wendell Holmes, “The Voiceless”

Alas for those who never sing
But die with all their music in them.

Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share. 

Auden

We would rather be ruined than changed.
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.

Mary Wollstonecraft responding to Edmund Burke

... the ivy is beautiful, but, when it insidiously destroys the trunk from which it receives support, who would not grub it up?

Cohen v. California (1971)

One man's vulgarity is another man's lyric. 

Rilke (trans Stephen Mitchell) The Duino Elegies

... for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

Dear Abby

The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back.

Seneca

Now I have no monsters left, and 'tis less labour for Hercules to fulfil my orders than for me to order; with joy he welcomes my commands.

James Baldwin

I may also have been afraid, and I could not have been the only one, that if I began to weep I would not be able to stop.

Anxiety emails between Paul Ford and Virginia Heffernan

https://medium.com/message/just-checking-in-d2b5540f0064