People say "the truth hurts," but really it's your aversion to it that does.

Literature

e.e. cummings

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing it's best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle, which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.

Kahlil Gibran

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and sails of your seafaring soul. If either be broken, you can but toss and drift or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas. For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining. And passion, unattended is a flame that burns to its own destruction.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

No man, for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

Hermann Hesse

There's no reality except the one contained within us. That's why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do.

As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.

Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

Chuck Palahniuk

The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.

If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?

People have to really suffer before they can risk doing what they love.

Your birth is a mistake you'll spend your whole life trying to correct.

It's because we're so trapped in our culture, in the being of being human on this planet with the brains we have, and the same two arms and legs everybody has. We're so trapped that any way we could imagine to escape would be just another part of the trap. Anything we want, we're trained to want.

The lower you fall, the higher you'll fly.

We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.

What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction..

You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be.

You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.

The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.

If you don't know what you want, you end up with a lot you don't.

What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized. What we call random is just patterns we cant decipher. What we can't understand we call nonsense. What we can't read we call gibberish. There is no free will. There are no variables. There is only the inevitable.

It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.

What we don't understand we can make mean anything.

The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.

People dont want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.

The answer is there is no answer.

It's pathetic how we can't live with the things we can't understand. How we need everything labeled and explained and deconstructed. Even if it's for sure unexplainable.

Language was just our way to explain away the wonder and the glory of the world. To deconstruct. To dismiss. People can't deal with how beautiful the world really is. How it can't be explained and understood. We don't live in the real world anymore, we live in a world of symbols.

Art never comes from happiness.


TV Shows

Everwood
Dreams arent meant to be understood any more than tragedy can be averted. Life happens to us. We learn to be grateful when things are good and-and to count our blessing when things are bad. And the only certainty in all of it is that it all just keeps happening.

Michelangelo said the best way to judge the essential elements of a sculpture is to throw it down a hill and the unimportant pieces will break away. Sometimes life is like that. It tosses us down a hill. But when we reach the bottom and only the important things are left, that's when our vision clears. That's when we hold on tight to what we know, while hope stirs inside us. It's all a matter of perspective.

A heart is a fragile thing. That's why we protect them so vigorously, give them away so rarely and why it means so much when we do. Some hearts are more fragile than others. Purer somehow. Like crystal in a world of glass, even the way they shatter is beautiful.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. I'm not sure who the first person was who said that. Probably Shakespeare. Or maybe Sting. But at the moment, it's the sentence that best explains my tragic flaw, my inability to change. I don't think I'm alone in this. The more I get to know other people, the more I realize it's kind of everyone's flaw. Staying exactly the same for as long as possible, standing perfectly still... It feels safer somehow. And if you are suffering, at least the pain is familiar. Because if you took that leap of faith, went outside the box, did something unexpected... Who knows what other pain might be out there, waiting for you. Chances are it could be even worse. So you maintain the status quo. Choose the road already traveled and it doesn't seem that bad. Not as far as flaws go. You're not a drug addict. You're not killing anyone... Except maybe yourself a little. When we finally do change, I don't think it happens like an earthquake or an explosion, where all of a sudden we're like this different person. I think it's smaller than that. The kind of thing most people wouldn't even notice unless they looked at us really close. Which, thank God, they never do. But you notice it. Inside you that change feels like a world of difference. And you hope this is it. This is the person you get to be forever... that you'll never have to change again.


One Tree Hill

You ever look a picture of yourself, and see a stranger in the background?. It makes you wonder how many strangers have pictures of you. How many moments of other peoples life have we been in. Were we a part of someone's life when their dream came true or were we there when their dream died. Did we keep trying to get in? As if we were somehow destined to be there or did the shot take us by surprise. Just think, you could be a big part of someone elses life, and not even know it.

Sometimes I wonder if anything's absolute anymore. Is There Still right and wrong? Good and bad? Truth and lies? Or is everything negotiable,left to interpretation, grey. Sometimes we're forced to bend the truth, transform it, cause we're faced with things that are not of our own making. And sometimes things simply catch up to us.

There comes a time when every life goes off course. In this desperate moment you must choose your direction. Will you fight to stay on the path while others tell you who you are? Or will you label yourself? Will you be honored by your choice? Or will you embrace your new path? Each morning you choose to move forward or to simply give up.


Movies
American Beauty
I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me... but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life... You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry... you will someday.

Broken Flowers
Well, the past is gone, I know that. The future isn't here yet, whatever it's going to be. So, all there is, is this. The present. That's it.

Candy
When you can stop, you don't want to. When you want to stop, you can't.

Waking Life
I feel like my transport should be an extension of my personality. Voila. And this? This is like my little window to the world, and every minute, it's a different show. Now, I may not understand it. I may not even necessarily agree with it. But I'll tell you what, I accept it and just sort of glide along. You want to keep things on an even keel I guess is what I'm saying. You want to go with the flow. The sea refuses no river. The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving. Saves on introductions and good-byes. The ride does not require an explanation. Just occupants. That's where you guys come in. It's like you come onto this planet with a crayon box. Now, you may get the 8-pack, you may get the 16-pack. But it's all in what you do with the crayons, the colors that you're given. Don't worry about drawing within the lines or coloring outside the lines. I say color outside the lines. Color right off he page. Don't box me in. We're in motion to the ocean. We are not landlocked, I'll tell ya that.

The reason why I refuse to take existentialism... as just another French fashion or historical curiosity... is that I think it has something very important to offer us for the new century. I 'm afraid we're losing the real virtues of living life passionately, the sense of taking responsibility for who you are, the ability to make something of yourself and feeling good about life. Existentialism is often discussed as if it's a philosophy of despair. But I think the truth is just the opposite. Sartre once interviewed said he never really felt a day of despair in his life. But one thing that comes out from reading these guys... is not a sense of anguish about life so much as... a real kind of exuberance of feeling on top of it. It's like your life is yours to create. I've read the post modernists with some interest, even admiration. But when I read them, I always have this awful nagging feeling... that something absolutely essential is getting left out. The more that you talk about a person as a social construction... or as a confluence of forces... or as fragmented or marginalized, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses. And when Sartre talks about responsibility, he's not talking about something abstract. He's not talking about the kind of self or soul that theologians would argue about. It's something very concrete. It's you and me talking. Making decisions. Doing things and taking the consequences. It might be true that there are six billion people in the world and counting. Nevertheless, what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms. Makes a difference to other people and it sets an example. In short, I think the message here is... that we should never simply write ourselves off... and see ourselves as the victim of various forces. It's always our decision who we are.

Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration. And this is where I think language came from. I mean, it came from our desire to transcend our isolation... and have some sort of connection with one another. And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival. Like, you know, "water." We came up with a sound for that. Or, "Saber-toothed tiger right behind you." We came up with a sound for that. But when it gets really interesting, I think, is when we use that same system of symbols to communicate... all the abstract and intangible things that we're experiencing. What is, like, frustration? Or what is anger or love? When I say "love," the sound comes out of my mouth... and it hits the other person's ear, travels through this Byzantine conduit in their brain, you know, through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They're just symbols. They're dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It's unspeakable. And yet, you know, when we communicate with one another, and we-- we feel that we have connected, and we think that we're understood, I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And that feeling might be transient, but I think it's what we live for.

A self-destructive man feels completely alienated, utterly alone. He's an outsider to the human community. He thinks to himself, "I must be insane." What he fails to realize is that society has, just as he does, a vested interest in considerable losses and catastrophes. These wars, famines, floods and quakes meet well-defined needs. Man wants chaos. In fact, he's gotta have it. Depression, strife, riots, murder, all this dread. We're irresistibly drawn to that almost orgiastic state... created out of death and destruction. It's in all of us. We revel in it. Sure, the media tries to put a sad face on these things, painting them up as great human tragedies. But we all know the function of the media has never been... to eliminate the evils of the world, no. Their job is to persuade us to accept those evils and get used to living with them. The powers that be want us to be passive observers.

You can't fight city hall, death and taxes. Don't talk about politics or religion. This is all the equivalent of enemy propaganda rolling across the picket line. " Lay down, G.I. Lay down, G.I." We saw it all through the 20th Century. And now in the 21st Century, it's time to stand up and realize... that we should not allow ourselves to be crammed into this rat maze. We should not submit to dehumanization. I don't know about you, but I'm concerned with what's happening in this world. I'm concerned with the structure. I'm concerned with the systems of control, those that control my life and those that seek to control it even more! I want freedom! That's what I want! And that's what you should want! It's up to each and every one of us to turn loose and just shovel the greed, the hatred, the envy and, yes, the insecurities... because that is the central mode of control-- make us feel pathetic, small... so we'll willingly give up our sovereignty, our liberty, our destiny. We have got to realize that we're being conditioned on a mass scale. Start challenging this corporate slave state! The 21st Century is gonna be a new century, not the century of slavery, not the century of lies and issues of no significance... and classism and statism and all the rest of the modes of control! It's gonna be the age of humankind... standing up for something pure and something right! What a bunch of garbage-- liberal Democrat, conservative Republican. It's all there to control you. Two sides of the same coin. Two management teams bidding for control! The C.E.O. job of Slavery, Incorporated! The truth is out there in front of you, but they lay out this buffet of lies! I'm sick of it, and I'm not gonna take a bite out of it! Do you got me? Resistance is not futile. We're gonna win this thing. Humankind is too good! We're not a bunch of underachievers! We're gonna stand up and we're gonna be human beings! We're gonna get fired up about the real things, the things that matter: creativity and the dynamic human spirit that refuses to submit! Well, that's it! That's all I got to say! It's in your court.

The quest is to be liberated from the negative, which is really our own will to nothingness. And once having said yes to the instant, the affirmation is contagious. It bursts into a chain of affirmations that knows no limit. To say yes to one instant... is to say yes to all of existence. And the funny thing is, our cells are completely regenerating every seven years. We've already become completely different people several times over, and yet we always remain quintessentially ourselves.

I know we haven't met, but I don't want to be an ant. You know? I mean, it's like we go through life... with our antennas bouncing off one other, continuously on ant autopilot, with nothing really human required of us. Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there. All action basically for survival. All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along... in an efficient, polite manner. " Here's your change." " Paper or plastic?" "Credit or debit?" "You want ketchup with that?" I don't want a straw. I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don't want to give that up. I don't want to be an ant, you know?

The worst mistake that you can make is to think youre alive when really youre asleep in lifes waiting room.

If you can wake up, you should... because someday you won't be able to.

There's only one instant and it's right now... and it's eternity.

The beach, a blur of grey and white, so cold—
A frigid wind digs deep into my coat.
The roar of crashing waves is loud and bold;
Across the sea, I see a struggling fisher's boat.

I, too, was a fisher on that summer day.
And you were like an anchor on my line.
You weighed me down with every word you'd say,
but I made a promise to myself; I would be fine.

"There are other fish," my dad would say to me,
But I did not see a point in looking.
Though an experienced fisher I may be,
you were the one who did the hooking.

You drew me in, but pull no more.
I cut your line, and stay on shore.