Speak.

There is no escape. You can’t be a vagabond and an artist and still be a solid citizen, a wholesome, upstanding man. You want to get drunk, so you have to accept the hangover. You say yes to the sunlight and pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. Everything is within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the apprehension of death. Say yes to everything, shirk nothing. Don’t try to lie to yourself. You are not a solid citizen. You are not a Greek. You are not harmonious, or the master of yourself. You are a bird in the storm. Let it storm! Let it drive you! How much have you lied! A thousand times, even in your poems and books, you have played the harmonious man, the wise man, the happy, the enlightened man. In the same way, men attacking in war have played heroes, while their bowels twitched. My God, what a poor ape, what a fencer in the mirror man is— particularly the artist— particularly myself!

- Herman Hesse (via cameronlee)

(Source: fuckyeahexistentialism)

How do you get so empty? Who takes it out of you?

- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (via h-o-r-n-g-r-y)

(Source: gildings)

In the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling.

- Gertrude Stein (via annie)

Mind you, sometimes the angels smoke, hiding it with their sleeves, and when the archangel comes, they throw the cigarettes away: that’s when you get shooting stars.

- ~ Vladimir Nabokov (via conflictingheart)

(Source: rabbitinthemoon)

The fact that you’re struggling doesn’t make you a burden. It doesn’t make you unloveable or undesirable or undeserving of care. It doesn’t make you too much or too sensitive or too needy. It makes you human. Everyone struggles. Everyone has a difficult time coping, and at times, we all fall apart. During these times, we aren’t always easy to be around — and that’s okay. No one is easy to be around one hundred percent of the time. Yes, you may sometimes be unpleasant or difficult. And yes, you may sometimes do or say things that make the people around you feel helpless or sad. But those things aren’t all of who you are and they certainly don’t discount your worth as a human being. The truth is that you can be struggling and still be loved. You can be difficult and still be cared for. You can be less than perfect, and still be deserving of compassion and kindness.

- Daniell Koepke   (via anditslove)

(Source: internal-acceptance-movement)

But some people can’t tell where it hurts. They can’t calm down. They can’t ever stop howling.

- Margaret Atwood  (via anditslove)

(Source: armsoreal)