The Universe, The Stars and Me

 Believing that I was blinded by love, I doubted everything, but doubt, far from paralysing me, pushed me in the direction of oceans whose very existence I couldn't admit.

- Paulo Coelho

His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or revery, he had heard their tale before.

- James Joyce

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

-  Galileo Galilei

Winter winds

I still catch myself feeling sad about things that don’t matter anymore. 

- Kurt Vonnegut

His words reminded her of those in the wind, whispered to her on cold winter nights, calming but too late to do any good. Promises that were whispered could be as deceiving as the reflection of the full moon. She remembered clearly the moon on the lake beside her grandmother's cottage. She wasted her whole summer holiday trying to get hold of it. 

Quotes by Kazuo Ishiguro

Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading. 

Indeed — why should I not admit it? — in that moment, my heart was breaking. 

It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you've made, and there's this panic because you don't know yet the scale of disaster you've left yourself open to. 

There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.

- Quotes by Kazuo Ishiguro

Cold, Crushing Pain

Maybe it has ended a long time ago and it’s just one of those endings that take longer than usual to reveal themselves. Maybe you knew, but you refuse to accept that it has ended. Or maybe it never really began. Either way, the door to that dream has closed.

I open the window and let the cold winter wind blow in. Like bird out of its cage, pieces of my broken heart fly into the starless sky. What remains is sorrow, pouring out to every corner of the room. Standing here alone, i let it rain over me. Because only in this cold darkness, i can bravely face the painful truth and see clearly the dark shadows of my unspeakable dream.

Quotes by Fernando Pessoa

What has happened to us has happened to everyone or only us; if to everyone, then it's no novelty, and if only to us, then it won't be understood. 

We all have two lives: The true, the one we dreamed of in childhood and go on dreaming of as adults in a substratum of mist; the false, the one we love when we live with others, the practical, the useful, the one we end up by being put in a coffin.

I feel as if I'm always on the verge of waking up. 

I've always been an ironic dreamer, unfaithful to my inner promises. Like a complete outsider, a casual observer of whom I thought I was, I've always enjoyed watching my daydreams go down in defeat. I was never convinced of what I believed in. I filled my hands with sand, called it gold, and opened them up to let it slide through. Words were my only truth. When the right words were said, all was done; the rest was the sand that had always been.

I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist. 

To live is to be someone else. Feeling is impossible if we feel today as we felt yesterday: to feel today the same thing we felt yesterday is not to feel at all--it's merely to remember today what we felt yesterday, since today we are the living cadaver of yesterday's lost life.

I've always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect.
 

The painful intensity of my sensations, even when they're happy ones; the blissful intensity of my sensations, even when they're sad. 

- Quotes by Fernando Pessoa

Quotes by Alice Hoffman

Some things you cannot wish away or think away. They become part of you when you remember them.

Fear is contagious. It doubles within minutes; it grows in places where there’s never been any doubt before.

The past stays with a man, sticking to his heels like glue. Invisible and heartbreaking and unavoidable, threaded to the future, just as surely as day is sewn to night.

You can't change what's means to be. 

He had a way of taking your hand, which made it clear he'd have to be the one to let go.
 

This was what it was. The ruin of it. The depth of it. Have it once and you can have it again. That’s the riddle. That’s the truth.

The original fairy tale was about the youngest sister going into a room in the castle and finding all the bodies of the wives that came before her - she is confronted with truth, thinking about how often we think we know people and we really don't.

Your mistake was walking down the road where I was. My mistake was everything else.

- Quotes by Alice Hoffman