Paradiso

We Wear the Mask

The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.

I leapt eagerly into books. The characters’ lives were so much more interesting than the lonely heartbeat of my own.

If you don’t get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don’t want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.

If I had a flower for every time I thought of you…I could walk through my garden forever.”

Honesty is a very expensive gift, Don’t expect it from cheap people.

some moments are nice, some are nicer, some are even worth writing about

I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.

We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.

Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.

Why did happy memories fade and blur until one could scarcely recall them at all, while horrible memories seemed to retain their blinding clarity and painful sharpness?

I do not exist to impress the world. I exist to live my life in a way that will make me happy.