Real life takes place inside us.

"It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight."

--Vladimir Nabokov, 'Lolita'

"Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don't stop to think, don't interrupt the scream, exhale, release life's rapture. Everything is blooming. Everything is flying. Everything is screaming, choking on its screams. Laughter. Running. Let-down hair. That is all there is to life. "

--Vladimir Nabokov

"In spite of everything I loved you, and will go on loving you--on my knees, with my shoulders drawn back, showing my heels to the headsman and straining my goose neck--even then. And afterwards--perhaps most of all afterwards--I shall love you, and one day we shall have a real, all-embracing explanation, and then perhaps we shall somehow fit together, you and I, and turn ourselves in such a way that we form one pattern, and solve the puzzle: draw a line from point A to point B...without looking, or, without lifting the pencil...or in some other way...we shall connect the points, draw the line, and you and I shall form that unique design for which I yearn."

--Vladimir Nabokov, 'Invitation to a Beheading'

"A heartless hand on my shoulder

A push and it's over

Alabaster crashes down

Six months is a long time

Tried living in the real world

Instead of a shell

But before I began

I was bored before I even began"

--Morrissey

“She was half asleep. There was an expression of dreaming on her face. I hated to interrupt her. I know how much a dream can be worth.”

--Richard Brautigan

“Can you see me? All of me? Probably not. No one ever really has.”

--Jeffrey Eugenides, 'Middlesex'

because i want people to understand what I think about so often. to think the world is as beautiful as i think it is. and i want to talk to everyone about everything. good god, i want to yell at everyone, "do you see it? do you see everything around you?" i would ask them, panicked. they old just keep staring up at me. "don't you notice it?? all of it? the world? it's fucking beautiful. and we trample all over it, raking away its blanket of leaves, scraping away its fallen snow so meticulously arranged, walking from a to b to c to d, fixated on a flaw in our fingernails, spitting gum out of car windows haphazardly. "don't you see it?" i'd ask. "it's wonderful and i want you to realize it," i would flail my arms around and be out of breath. but i could inhale and keep going.

Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.

I am the shyest human ever invented, but I have a lion inside me that wouldn’t shut up.

One of the conditions of being human is, even if we’re surrounded by others, we essentially live our lives alone. Real life takes place inside us.

"But for the record, I personally subscribe to the belief that normal is just a setting on a dryer."

--Jodi Picoult, 'House Rules'

My head is too full of ideas I haven't thought of yet.

You are but an appearance, and not absolutely the thing you appear to be.

You’re no longer the only one that makes me happy, Sun.

I've always lived like this, keeping a comfortable… distance.

The universe is constantly talking to you and showing you things. When something happens, stop, watch, and remember. Ask yourself, “What does this mean?” The fact that you are coincidentally there at that precise moment in eternity to witness what’s happening means that it’s yours. It’s the external world talking to you. It is showing you things about yourself. The seeming external world is, in fact, internal - and it’s talking to you. It loves you in its detached way.

"So you think that you’re a failure, do you? Well, you probably are. What’s wrong with that? In the first place, if you’ve any sense at all you must have learned by now that we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free."

--Tom Robbins