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Henry Rollins

You are beautiful like demolition. Just the thought of you draws my knuckles white. I don’t need a god. I have you and your beautiful mouth, your hands holding onto me, the nails leaving unfelt wounds, your hot breath on my neck. The taste of your saliva. The darkness is ours. The nights belong to… Continue reading Henry Rollins

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Robert Fulghum

We even make ourselves up, fusing what we are with what we wish into what we must become. I’m not sure why it must be so, but it is. – Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (Ballantine Books; Anniversary, Subsequent edition, September 30, 2003) Originally published September 1, 1988,

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Vladimir Nabokov

I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness―in a landscape selected at random―is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants.… Continue reading Vladimir Nabokov

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Ted Kooser

This night is a cold, deep lake, and I am lying on its bottom, surprised to be able to breathe. The bellied sail of the moon has been wafted out of sight, but thousands of starlights sparkle up there on the surface, just bright enough that I can hold up the fish of my fingers… Continue reading Ted Kooser

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Martha Gellhorn

And I do not know what to think or how to think; there is only this longing for you which is uncontrollable, frightening and quite useless. —  Martha Gellhorn,from “a letter to David Gurewitsch, April 5, 1950,” Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn (Holt Paperbacks, 2007)

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Emilie Autumn

“You,” he said, “are a terribly real thing in a terribly false world, and that, I believe, is why you are in so much pain. ― Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls (The Asylum Emporium; 2nd edition, January 1, 2011)

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Donald Miller

… fear isn’t only a guide to keep us safe; it’s also a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life. —  Donald Miller, A Million Miles In a Thousand Years (‎ Thomas Nelson Inc; 33265th edition, January 1, 2009)

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Annie Dillard

I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.  — Annie Dillard, from “Living Like Weasels,” Teaching a Stone to Talk (HarperCollins, New York, 2009, Kindle Edition)

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William Alexander Percy

The good die when they should live, the evil live when they should die; heroes perish and cowards escape; noble efforts do not succeed because they are noble, and wickedness is consumed in its own nature. Looking at truth is not at first a heartening experience–it becomes so, if at all, only with time, with… Continue reading William Alexander Percy

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