Hands, shoulders, knees and toes.

Your soul sleeps: the shock is yet to be given which shall wake it. You think all existence lapses in as quiet a flow as that in which your youth has hitherto slid away. Floating on with closed eyes and muffled ears, you neither see the rocks bristling not far off in the bed of the flood, nor hear the breakers boil at their base. But I tell you - and you may mark my words - you will come some day to a craggy pass in the channel, where the whole of life’s stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer current - as I am now.”

“I can’t live if living is being without you.”

(Source: strawberrifields)

“So many words get lost. They leave the mouth and lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days, you can hear their chorus rushing past: IwasabeautifulgirlPleasedon’tgoItoobelievemybodyismadeofglass-I’veneverlovedanyoneIthinkofmyselfasfunnyForgiveme…. 

There was a time when it wasn’t uncommon to use a piece of string to guide words that otherwise might falter on the way to their destinations. Shy people carried a little bunch of string in their pockets, but people considered loudmouths had no less need for it, since those used to being overheard by everyone were often at a loss for how to make themselves heard by someone. The physical distance between two people using a string was often small; sometimes the smaller the distance, the greater the need for the string. 

The practice of attaching cups to the ends of string came much later. Some say it is related to the irrepressible urge to press shells to our ears, to hear the still-surviving echo of the world’s first expression. Others say it was started by a man who held the end of a string that was unraveled across the ocean by a girl who left for America. 

When the world grew bigger, and there wasn’t enough string to keep the things people wanted to say from disappearing into the vastness, the telephone was invented. 

Sometimes no length of string is long enough to say the thing that needs to be said. In such cases all the string can do, in whatever its form, is conduct a person’s silence.”

“The world was young, the mountains green, 
No stain yet on the Moon was seen, 
No words were laid on stream or stone 
When Durin woke and walked alone. 
He named the nameless hills and dells; 
He drank from yet untasted wells; 
He stooped and looked in Mirrormere, 
And saw a crown of stars appear, 
As gems upon a silver thread, 
Above the shadow of his head. 

The world was fair, the mountains tall, 
In Elder Days before the fall 
Of mighty kings in Nargothrond 
And Gondolin, who now beyond 
The Western Seas have passed away: 
The world was fair in Durin’s Day. 

A king he was on carven throne 
In many-pillared halls of stone 
With golden roof and silver floor, 
And runes of power upon the door. 
The light of sun and star and moon 
In shining lamps of crystal hewn 
Undimmed by cloud or shade of night 
There shone for ever fair and bright. 

There hammer on the anvil smote, 
There chisel clove, and graver wrote; 
There forged was blade, and bound was hilt; 
The delver mined, the mason built. 
There beryl, pearl, and opal pale, 
And metal wrought like fishes’ mail, 
Buckler and corslet, axe and sword, 
And shining spears were laid in hoard. 

Unwearied then were Durin’s folk; 
Beneath the mountains music woke: 
The harpers harped, the minstrels sang, 
And at the gates the trumpets rang. 

The world is grey, the mountains old, 
The forge’s fire is ashen-cold; 
No harp is wrung, no hammer falls: 
The darkness dwells in Durin’s halls; 
The shadow lies upon his tomb 
In Moria, in Khazad-dûm. 
But still the sunken stars appear 
In dark and windless Mirrormere; 
There lies his crown in water deep, 
Till Durin wakes again from sleep. 
-The Song of Durin” 

(Source: hannahsingletonphotography)

“You can’t wait around for someone else to make you happy. Make joy in your own heart and go from there.”

“The sad truth is that certain types of things can’t go backward. Once they start going forward, no matter what you do, they can’t go back the way they were. If even one little thing goes awry, then that’s how it will stay forever.” 

“No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until they come home and rest their heads on their old, familiar pillow.”

“I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can’t feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. but I think I have known it pretty often, too often.”

(Source: iancurtiswishlists)

“Live to the point of tears.” 

He left me at the Gare St. Lazare last night. I began to write in the train to balance the seven-leagued boot jumping out of my life with the ant like activity of the pen. The ant words rushed back and forth carrying crumbs: such heavy crumbs. Bigger than ants.

‘Have you enough heliotrope ink?’ Henry asked.

I should not be using ink but perfume. I should be writing with Narcisse Noir, with Mitsouko, with jasmine, with honeysuckle. I could write beautiful words that would exhale the potent smell of women’s honey and men’s white blood.

Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, vol. 1 1931-1934 

(Source: frenchtwist)