"I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction’s job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. I guess a big part of serious fiction’s purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves. Since an ineluctable part of being a human self is suffering, part of what we humans come to art for is an experience of suffering, necessarily a vicarious experience, more like a sort of “generalization” of suffering. Does this make sense? We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy’s impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character’s pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with our own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside. It might just be that simple."

David Foster Wallace (via whiskyandwhimsy)

"February dawn — frost
on the path
Where I paced all winter."

from Book of Haikus by Jack Kerouac (via melancholynotes)

(Source: growing-orbits)

kari-shma:

red beauties (by cae3 - Anita)

(via kari-shma)

artpixie:

time-zero (by monsieur_chat)

"The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out, and taken yours."

Hector, The History Boys (via whiskyandwhimsy)

"One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving."

Paulo Coelho (via kari-shma)

(Source: kari-shma)

"I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit."

 - John Steinbeck

"Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting."

Elizabeth Bibesco (via kari-shma)

(Source: kari-shma)

"Everyone of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads—at least that’s where I imagine it—there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live forever in your own little private library."

Haruki Murakami (via kari-shma) (via quote-book)