Taedium vitae

— Jeanette Winterson, The Passion (via allofthemwitches)

— Catherynne M. Valente, from “The Red Girl,” The Bread We Eat in Dreams (via prideandpurpose)

frank bidart, from end of a friendship // ocean vuong, from prayer for the newly damned // gregory orr, from like any other man // oscar wilde, from the picture of dorian gray // margaret atwood, from power politics: poems // adonis, from celebrating childhood” (tr. khaled mattawa) // nicole homer, from underbelly

C. S. Lewis, from ‘Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold’

My partner and I have been spending the week driving back to the PNW. On Tuesday we stopped in Manhattan, KS so I could take him to the Flint Hills Discovery Center and Konza Prairie; I got some great late-afternoon lighting for pictures like these. It's been nothing but driving since then, but even getting to enjoy the changing scenery through the windshield has been nice--prairie, mountains, and now sagebrush in southern Idaho. Every time I make this trip I feel like my world simultaneously gets larger and smaller; I realize how much there is out there still to explore, and yet also I feel more connected to it than ever. I really want more time to travel and ramble around various ecosystems.

Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

The older you get the more you will realize that your friends are people who have made mistakes and bad decisions and even just fucked up and hurt people.

And obviously your boundaries with your friends are completely up to you but you do need to recognize that if you cut off everyone who has done something wrong, you’re going to end up with no friends (and you yourself will have also fucked up in your life, and not lived up to those impossible standards either).

I’ve found it’s much more constructive to learn how to say “hey dude, that was massively fucked up of you,” because most people are really willing to say “yeah, it was, I need to work on it/not do it again/apologize and make things right” ESPECIALLY if they are hearing it from you as their friend.

Sometimes the kindest thing you can do for another person is to tell them that they’ve done something wrong, help them fix it, and stay their friend because it’s what we would want from them if we did something wrong.

what im learning is that you cannot avoid your way into a life you enjoy

James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room

‘What Use is Poetry?’ Meena Alexander, 2013

it is indeed quite aphoristic and fun to pull individual quotes. but if you want to read “october” by louise glück in its entirety, which i highly recommend, you can find it here

friends, devastated to report that louise glück passed away today in this very october. if you haven’t read the poem before, i recommend doing so now.

Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine