…I would think how words go straight up in a thin line, quick and harmless, and how terribly doing goes along the earth, clinging to it, so that after a while the two lines are too far apart for the same person to straddle from one to the other; and that sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words.

3 weeks ago  /  13 notes  /  Source: lifeinpoetry

In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don’t know what I am. I don’t know if I am or not. Jewel knows he is, because he does not know that he does not know whether he is or not. He cannot empty himself for sleep because he is not what he is and he is what he is not. Beyond the unlamped wall I can hear the rain shaping the wagon that is ours, the load that is no longer theirs that felled and sawed it nor yet theirs that bought it and which is not ours either, lie on our wagon though it does, since only the wind and the rain shape it only to Jewel and me, that are not asleep. And since sleep is is-not and rain and wind are was, it is not. Yet the wagon is, because when the wagon is was, Addie Bundren will not be. And Jewel is, so Addie Bundren must be. And then I must be, or I could not empty myself for sleep in a strange room. And so if I am not emptied yet, I am is.
How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.

3 weeks ago  /  5 notes  /  Source: oysterbunnies

He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others; just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn’t need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear.

3 weeks ago  /  15 notes  /  Source: todieistoliveinherhead

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s not matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…and one fine morning—
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

3 weeks ago  /  12 notes  /  Source: durbervillehardy

There’s a loneliness that only exists in one’s mind. The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.

3 weeks ago  /  123 notes  /  Source: itisallbrokennow