+ "I like to have space to spread my mind out in."
— Virginia Woolf, from a diary entry dated 5 September 1926

(Source: violentwavesofemotion, via mirroir)

+ "What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours — that is what you must be able to attain. To be solitary as you were when you were a child, when the grownups walked around involved with matters that seemed large and important because they looked so busy and because you didn’t understand a thing about what they were doing."
— Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Stephen Mitchell

(Source: cartographe, via heliophobus)

+ "Pursuing happiness, and I did, and I still do, is not at all the same as being happy – which I think is fleeting, dependent on circumstances, and a bit bovine. If the sun is shining, stand in it – yes, yes, yes. Happy times are great but happy times pass… The pursuit of happiness is more elusive; it is life-long, and it is not goal-centred."
— Jeanette Winterson, from Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

+ "I know now, after fifty years, that the finding/losing, forgetting/remembering, leaving/returning, never stops. The whole of life is about another chance, and while we are alive, till the very end, there is always another chance."
— Jeanette Winterson, from “Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?”

(Source: bookmania, via lifeinpoetry)

+ "That’s what’s so gorgeous about humanity. It doesn’t matter how bleak our daily lives are, we still fight for the light. I think that’s our divinity. We lean into love, even in the most hideous circumstances. We manage to hope."
— Mary Karr, with thanks to leopoldgursky

(via leopoldgursky)

+ "There are so many different ways to be connected to people. There are the people you feel this unspoken connection to, even though there’s not even a word for it. There’s the people who you’ve known forever who know you in this way that other people can’t because they’ve seen you change. They’ve let you change."
— Angela Chase, in My So-Called Life

+ "For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books."
— Herman Melville, born today in 1819, with thanks to invisiblestories

+ "More and more I found myself at a loss for words and didn’t want to hear other people talking either. Their conversations seemed false and empty. I preferred to look at the sea, which said nothing and never made you feel alone."
— Paula McLain, from The Paris Wife, with thanks to blogut

+ "Regret is this: Felt but not expressed."
— Lydiane

(Source: heliophobus)