“
The Fabric of our Souls is thin and worn. We must be gentle and love tirelessly.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
... the greatest menace to our capacity for contemplation is the incessant fabrication of tawdry empty stimuli which kill the receptivity of the soul.
”
”
Josef Pieper (Happiness and Contemplation)
“
I saw a young woman. A confused little flower trying to bloom in the daylight when you were always meant to thrive beneath the stars, unlike those around you.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
For the broken ones who are in need of something dark, morbid, and beautiful.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
Late modern society is principally concerned with purchasing things, in ever greater abundance and variety, and so has to strive to fabricate an ever greater number of desires to gratify, and to abolish as many limits and prohibitions upon desire as it can. Such a society is already implicitly atheist and so must slowly but relentlessly apply itself to the dissolution of transcendent values. It cannot allow ultimate goods to distract us from proximate goods. Our sacred writ is advertising, our piety is shopping, our highest devotion is private choice. God and the soul too often hinder the purely acquisitive longings upon which the market depends, and confront us with values that stand in stark rivalry to the only truly substantial value at the center of the social universe: the price tag.
”
”
David Bentley Hart (The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss)
“
I was born with a bad heart—literally and figuratively. But you gave your heart to me, and because of you, I will live. Because of you, I will never take my life for granted ever again.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
Remedium meum,” he says and a vulnerable smile crosses his lips. “My cure,
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
Our clothes are too much a part of us for most of us ever to be entirely indifferent to their condition: it is as though the fabric were indeed a natural extension of the body, or even of the soul.
”
”
Quentin Crisp
“
The true fabric of our soul is when we look in the mirror, and the person starring crystal clear back at us seems to be so very familiar!
”
”
Angie karan
“
You should wait… and it doesn’t have to be for anything specific. I’m just saying—wait for the weight of the world to pass. Wait until the tremors that wrack through your skull drift into the depths again. Wait until the sun rises, and the light makes you feel a little less pointless.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
And just like that, I think I’ve found something as compelling as death.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
Avoidance has always been my coping mechanism. If I don’t think about it, it doesn’t matter. My day goes on.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
I’ll stop you in your darkest hours. Do you promise to do the same for me?
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
Fear in its most wicked, powerful form cripples our souls and warps the very fabric of our true hearts.
”
”
Stasi Eldredge (Becoming Myself: Embracing God's Dream of You)
“
I like reading books when I’m not dying inside.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
Lanston Nevers “The Fabric of our Souls is thin and worn. We must be gentle and love tirelessly.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
The fabric of our souls is thin—we’ve been wandering this world just to unite in this small corner of the universe.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
Our clothes are too much a part of us for most of us ever to be entirely indifferent to their condition: it is as though the fabric were indeed a natural extension of the body, or even of the soul.
”
”
Quentin Bell
“
No one leaves his or her world without being transfixed by its roots, or with a vacuum for a soul. We carry with us the memory of many fabrics, a self soaked in our history, our culture; a memory, sometimes scattered, sometimes sharp and clear, of the streets of our childhood, of our adolescence; the reminiscence of something distant that suddenly stands out before us, in us, a shy gesture, an open hand, a smile lost in time and misunderstanding, a sentence, a simple sentence, possibly now forgotten by the one who said it. A word for so long a time attempted and never spoken, always stifled in inhibition, in the fear of being rejected- which as it implies a lack of confidence in ourselves, also means refusal to risk.
”
”
Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Impacts))
“
My mind is a plague that needs to be cured and people like me are damned to chase this mysterious elixir.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
She’s the image of heartache—and I want the pain she instills inside my heart forever.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
I’m burning inside, and it hurts. I just want to stop hurting.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
The fabric of our souls is thin—we’ve been wandering this world just to unite in this small corner of the universe. Our connection is frightening and enchanting all at once.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
You hear my heartbeat?” I nod, cheek rubbing the fabric of his shirt. “It’s beating for you, little bird,” he murmurs, holding me closer. “That can be our music.” “But you can’t hear mine,” I whisper, voice cracking. He pauses. “I can hear it, Phoebe. I hear it in my soul. I set my life by its every beat.
”
”
Julie Johnson (Cross the Line (Boston Love, #2))
“
My eyes drift down to his junk. I mean, come on, he’s wearing gray sweatpants—I can’t be blamed for noticing his package. Fall is gray sweatpants season, after all.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
It’s okay to be small and hidden away. Most gems are.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
The men hunched around, talking with the gaiety of souls about to eat plentifully, with the empty dark country about us, and the strange fabric of frost and frozen wind falling on our shoulders, and the great black sky of stars above us like a huge tray of gems and diamonds.
”
”
Sebastian Barry (Days Without End (Days Without End, #1))
“
Till death do us part, sunshine.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
I want to know her completely, so much so that we’ll never be able to untwine our vines.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
Liam?” “Yeah?” “If I’m tragic, what does that make you?” I think about that for a second. “Cruel.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
no great piece of art is made without a little suffering backing it.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
Sometimes the darkness inside me thinks that this is what they’ve wanted all along—for me to finally give in. Well, welcome to the shit show. The curtain is finally closing.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
No one else has experienced a love like Liam’s. It is chaotic. It is pure. It is love in its simplest, most cathartic form.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
He is my home. I don’t care that we aren’t heart-fated like he was with the mate he lost. I’ll tear the fabric of our souls and make knots in it to capture this moment for keeping. He’s mine by my demand alone, and I will not forfeit any ground.
”
”
Lillian Lark (Hoarded by the Dragon (Monstrous Matches, #4))
“
It was a reminder to me of what His salvation really means. I think...I think too often we compare our souls and our sins to a grass stain. We think that His sacrifice is sufficient to knock off the clumps and blades clinging to the outside of us, but not quite strong enough to get rid of the stain in the fabric.
”
”
Roseanna M. White (To Treasure an Heiress (The Secrets of the Isles, #2))
“
Whoever coined the phrase “sticks and stones” is an asshole, don’t you think? Words indeed hurt more than stones. Thanks for trying to gaslight me out of it though. It didn’t work.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
Liam presses a kiss to my lips. “Thank you for the happiest moments of my life.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
What kind of sickness takes your fucking emotions? It’s not fair.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
The threads of logic, intuition, and humanity should be beautifully interwoven through the fabric of our world.
”
”
Leta B. (Your Steady Soul: May you transform your pain, anger, and hurt into wisdom, kindness, and love.)
“
you wouldn’t be Wynn Coldfox if your mind wasn’t such a dark, lovely, wicked thing.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
Never let me go,” he says between our kisses. “Never,” I murmur back.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
It’s hard to hear others talk about their darkness. It hurts. But more than anything, I resonate with it.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
I try thinking of things that bring me relief other than cutting into myself. But the pull is unbearable.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to be me.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
You set my soul free from the chains I keep wrapped around my shoulders.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
You’ll lose your mind if you follow me into the dark, Liam.” “Already there, baby.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
Ultimately, the roast turkey must be regarded as a monument to Boomer's love.
Look at it now, plump and glossy, floating across Idaho as if it were a mammoth, mutated seed pod. Hear how it backfires as it passes the silver mines, perhaps in tribute to the origin of the knives and forks of splendid sterling that a roast turkey and a roast turkey alone possesses the charisma to draw forth into festivity from dark cupboards.
See how it glides through the potato fields, familiarly at home among potatoes but with an air of expectation, as if waiting for the flood of gravy.
The roast turkey carries with it, in its chubby hold, a sizable portion of our primitive and pagan luggage.
Primitive and pagan? Us? We of the laser, we of the microchip, we of the Union Theological Seminary and Time magazine? Of course. At least twice a year, do not millions upon millions of us cybernetic Christians and fax machine Jews participate in a ritual, a highly stylized ceremony that takes place around a large dead bird?
And is not this animal sacrificed, as in days of yore, to catch the attention of a divine spirit, to show gratitude for blessings bestowed, and to petition for blessings coveted?
The turkey, slain, slowly cooked over our gas or electric fires, is the central figure at our holy feast. It is the totem animal that brings our tribe together.
And because it is an awkward, intractable creature, the serving of it establishes and reinforces the tribal hierarchy. There are but two legs, two wings, a certain amount of white meat, a given quantity of dark. Who gets which piece; who, in fact, slices the bird and distributes its limbs and organs, underscores quite emphatically the rank of each member in the gathering.
Consider that the legs of this bird are called 'drumsticks,' after the ritual objects employed to extract the music from the most aboriginal and sacred of instruments. Our ancestors, kept their drums in public, but the sticks, being more actively magical, usually were stored in places known only to the shaman, the medicine man, the high priest, of the Wise Old Woman. The wing of the fowl gives symbolic flight to the soul, but with the drumstick is evoked the best of the pulse of the heart of the universe.
Few of us nowadays participate in the actual hunting and killing of the turkey, but almost all of us watch, frequently with deep emotion, the reenactment of those events. We watch it on TV sets immediately before the communal meal. For what are footballs if not metaphorical turkeys, flying up and down a meadow? And what is a touchdown if not a kill, achieved by one or the other of two opposing tribes? To our applause, great young hungers from Alabama or Notre Dame slay the bird. Then, the Wise Old Woman, in the guise of Grandma, calls us to the table, where we, pretending to be no longer primitive, systematically rip the bird asunder.
Was Boomer Petaway aware of the totemic implications when, to impress his beloved, he fabricated an outsize Thanksgiving centerpiece? No, not consciously. If and when the last veil dropped, he might comprehend what he had wrought. For the present, however, he was as ignorant as Can o' Beans, Spoon, and Dirty Sock were, before Painted Stick and Conch Shell drew their attention to similar affairs.
Nevertheless, it was Boomer who piloted the gobble-stilled butterball across Idaho, who negotiated it through the natural carving knives of the Sawtooth Mountains, who once or twice parked it in wilderness rest stops, causing adjacent flora to assume the appearance of parsley.
”
”
Tom Robbins (Skinny Legs and All)
“
That does sound pretty nice.” I manage a half-assed, heartbroken grin. “What genre do you like?” He winks at me. “Dark romance where the heroine gets fucked by the psychopaths.” I burst out laughing and he cracks a wide smile too. “Me too. I’ll give you recs if you give me yours.” “Deal.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
We began before words, and we will end beyond them.
It sometimes seems to me that our days are poisoned with too many words. Words said and not meant. Words said ‘and’ meant. Words divorced from feeling. Wounding words. Words that conceal. Words that reduce. Dead words.
If only words were a kind of fluid that collects in the ears, if only they turned into the visible chemical equivalent of their true value, an acid, or something curative – then we might be more careful. Words do collect in us anyway. They collect in the blood, in the soul, and either transform or poison people’s lives. Bitter or thoughtless words poured into the ears of the young have blighted many lives in advance. We all know people whose unhappy lives twist on a set of words uttered to them on a certain unforgotten day at school, in childhood, or at university.
We seem to think that words aren’t things. A bump on the head may pass away, but a cutting remark grows with the mind. But then it is possible that we know all too well the awesome power of words – which is why we use them with such deadly and accurate cruelty.
We are all wounded inside one way or other. We all carry unhappiness within us for some reason or other. Which is why we need a little gentleness and healing from one another. Healing in words, and healing beyond words. Like gestures. Warm gestures. Like friendship, which will always be a mystery. Like a smile, which someone described as the shortest distance between two people.
Yes, the highest things are beyond words.
That is probably why all art aspires to the condition of wordlessness. When literature works on you, it does so in silence, in your dreams, in your wordless moments. Good words enter you and become moods, become the quiet fabric of your being. Like music, like painting, literature too wants to transcend its primary condition and become something higher. Art wants to move into silence, into the emotional and spiritual conditions of the world. Statues become melodies, melodies become yearnings, yearnings become actions.
When things fall into words they usually descend. Words have an earthly gravity. But the best things in us are those that escape the gravity of our deaths. Art wants to pass into life, to lift it; art wants to enchant, to transform, to make life more meaningful or bearable in its own small and mysterious way. The greatest art was probably born from a profound and terrible silence – a silence out of which the greatest enigmas of our life cry: Why are we here? What is the point of it all? How can we know peace and live in joy? Why be born in order to die? Why this difficult one-way journey between the two mysteries?
Out of the wonder and agony of being come these cries and questions and the endless stream of words with which to order human life and quieten the human heart in the midst of our living and our distress.
The ages have been inundated with vast oceans of words. We have been virtually drowned in them. Words pour at us from every angle and corner. They have not brought understanding, or peace, or healing, or a sense of self-mastery, nor has the ocean of words given us the feeling that, at least in terms of tranquility, the human spirit is getting better.
At best our cry for meaning, for serenity, is answered by a greater silence, the silence that makes us seek higher reconciliation.
I think we need more of the wordless in our lives. We need more stillness, more of a sense of wonder, a feeling for the mystery of life. We need more love, more silence, more deep listening, more deep giving.
”
”
Ben Okri (Birds of Heaven)
“
There will never be a way to explain why I am this way. It’s something that you endure wholly, entirely. A deep and empty pit inside your flesh that never closes, no matter what you try to fill it with. No matter what thread you try to sew it shut with, it gapes and itches. An emergency exit that waits patiently for any who stray.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
We all lie. We all guard secrets—sometimes terrible ones—a side to us so dark, so shameful, that we quickly avert our own eyes from the shadow we might glimpse in the mirror. Instead we lock our dark halves deep in the basement of our souls. And on the surface of our lives, we work industriously to shape the public story of our selves. We say, “Look, world, this is me.” We craft posts on social media . . . See this wonderful lunch I’m eating at this trendy restaurant with my besties, see my sexy shoes, my cute puppy, boyfriend, tight ass in a bikini. See my gloriously perfect life . . . see what a fucking fabulous time I’m having drunk and at this party with my boobs swelling out of my sparkly tank top. Just look at those hot guys draped all over me. Aren’t you jealous . . . And then you wait to see how many people LIKE this fabricated version of yourself, your mood hinging on the number of clicks. Comments. Who commented. But darkness has a way of seeping through the cracks. It seeks the light . . .
”
”
Loreth Anne White (The Drowned Girls (Angie Pallorino, #1))
“
No one sees me as the person I sometimes dream I am. A nice girl. A person worthy of love. A soul that didn’t crawl up from hell. If I wasn’t here anymore, it would all stop. The pain. The dread. All the things that hurt my stupid conscience… If I die, maybe I’ll wake up somewhere better. Or I’ll just be dead. And I’m okay with that too.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
No one goes anywhere alone, least of all into exile—not even those who arrive physically alone, unaccompanied by family, spouse, children, parents, or siblings. No one leaves his or her world without having been transfixed by its roots, or with a vacuum for a soul. We carry with us the memory of many fabrics, a self soaked in our history, our culture; a memory, sometimes scattered, sometimes sharp and clear, of the streets of our childhood, of our adolescence; the reminiscence of something distant that suddenly stands out before us, in us, a shy gesture, an open hand, a smile lost in a time of misunderstanding, a sentence, a simple sentence possibly now forgotten by the one who had said it.
”
”
Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Impacts))
“
In an age of nothing,
at time when we stand at the brink of our own destruction.
Strengthen your belief in yourself,
in the future of humanity,
in the things of this world which cannot easily be percieved,
awaken that which lies dormant now within your soul.
Re-ignite the flame of your consciousness,
and measure the strength of your conviction.
Reveal the lie,
renounce your hatred.
Seek, find and embrace the truths
you are fortunate enough to discover.
Cherish them,
use them to anchor you in the sea of chaos that is the world we live in.
When twilight drwas near,
when you are pushed to the very limits of your soul,
when it seems that all you have left are the dead remnants
of the fabric of your life...
Believe.
”
”
Disturbed (Believe, Guitar Tab/Bass Edition)
“
Google had discovered a way to translate its nonmarket interactions with users into surplus raw material for the fabrication of products aimed at genuine market transactions with its real customers: advertisers.94 The translation of behavioral surplus from outside to inside the market finally enabled Google to convert investment into revenue. The corporation thus created out of thin air and at zero marginal cost an asset class of vital raw materials derived from users’ nonmarket online behavior.
”
”
Shoshana Zuboff (Master or Slave? The Fight for the Soul of Our Information Civilization)
“
If this is all you read, if you put down this book at the end of this sentence, know that this is the most important message of Mary’s gospel: we are inherently good. Now, if you’re still with me, that goodness can never be lost. We can feel lost to it. But it is woven into the fabric of who we are; it’s our nature. Goodness. And the word that for me describes this experience, of knowing this inherent goodness, is soul. The word soul to me describes that eternal aspect of our being; an aspect that allows us to feel loved, and to experience that we are love. And that our humanity is not intrinsically sinful, or shameful. This human body is the soul’s chance to be here.
”
”
Meggan Watterson (Mary Magdalene Revealed: The First Apostle, Her Feminist Gospel & the Christianity We Haven't Tried Yet)
“
If we constantly apply ourselves to meditation practice during the course of our lives, we may be able, though with some difficulty, to strip away all the supports that maintain the illusion of the ego-self. However, the material fabric of the ego's support-bot the world and the physical body-is destroyed by death and all contact with its "friends" is severed. Now the mind is truly left to its own devices and its experience of reality is much more direct and immediate. The worldly concerns which formerly served as the support of the ego have all been stripped away and the insubstantial nature of its condition has been exposed in all its falsity. It was never really real at all, and the awesome power of this truth may strike the consciousness like a bombshell!
”
”
Stephen Hodge (The Illustrated Tibetan Book of the Dead: A New Reference Manual for the Soul)
“
Narrative nonfiction is an act of conception and construction; it is formation of a personal legend from the mist of memory using mental hydraulics plied with the tools of logic, structure, design, and imagination. An engaged mind possesses a documentary sensibility that fabricates a memoirist identity, which alliance mollifies their bleak interior critic. A conscientious mind hews a residue of meaning from the verisimilitude of a person’s metafictional baggage. A basic impulse of all free people is to speak to an appreciative audience. Writing the story of our life constitutes asserting the universal human right to declare and define who we are. When we write our story, we become a stakeholder of our place in the world, we affirm the right to shape our future, and avow the verity to heal our torn souls.
”
”
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
“
To move more into living in love, we need to see how we are substituting for love and truth in our life. We create substitutes to stop us from feeling our deeper wounds, and these substitutes, needs and addictions keep us circling round and round in the effects of these deep seated emotions that form the very fabric of our wounded soul. The more we circle, the more frustrated we can become at our lack of progress, at our own unwillingness to feel deeper, until something has got to give. We fill the holes of our wounds with cheap, pale imitations and substitutes from the world and other people around us. All these substitutes are medications for the causal wound underneath. It is like covering over a bleeding, cut-off stump of an amputated arm with a piece of tissue paper, and hoping it will stick and do the job.
”
”
Padma Aon Prakasha (Dimensions of Love: 7 Steps to God)
“
In our healing and growing, we must, inevitably, make peace with our own stories and then tell them to at least one person. The telling is crucial. We must own our true stories. In doing so, we begin again to belong to the world in the way only we can. The door to soul opens […] Story is the very fabric of our lives. Every life begins and ends with a story and, taken as a whole, is a story. Every relationship is a story. Every dream. Every experience. Each soul — whether embodied or not in that person's life — is a story longing to be told. The world itself is a story; indeed, it might be more accurate to say the world is made up of stories than to say it is made up of atoms, earth, trees, and other things. The German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein insisted the world divides up into facts, not things; I prefer to say stories, not facts. Storytelling has an enormous power over us. It conveys meaning in a way a mere explanation never could. Telling and listening to stories are essential tools in approaching the soul and embodying what we find there. There are many soulcraft skills and practices that incorporate storytelling.
”
”
Bill Plotkin (Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche)
“
He’d mentioned it a month before. A month. Not a good month, admittedly, but still—a month. That was enough time for him to have written something, at least. There was still something of him, or by him at least, floating around out there. I needed it. “I’m gonna go to his house,” I told Isaac. I hurried out to the minivan and hauled the oxygen cart up and into the passenger seat. I started the car. A hip-hop beat blared from the stereo, and as I reached to change the radio station, someone started rapping. In Swedish. I swiveled around and screamed when I saw Peter Van Houten sitting in the backseat. “I apologize for alarming you,” Peter Van Houten said over the rapping. He was still wearing the funeral suit, almost a week later. He smelled like he was sweating alcohol. “You’re welcome to keep the CD,” he said. “It’s Snook, one of the major Swedish—” “Ah ah ah ah GET OUT OF MY CAR.” I turned off the stereo. “It’s your mother’s car, as I understand it,” he said. “Also, it wasn’t locked.” “Oh, my God! Get out of the car or I’ll call nine-one-one. Dude, what is your problem?” “If only there were just one,” he mused. “I am here simply to apologize. You were correct in noting earlier that I am a pathetic little man, dependent upon alcohol. I had one acquaintance who only spent time with me because I paid her to do so—worse, still, she has since quit, leaving me the rare soul who cannot acquire companionship even through bribery. It is all true, Hazel. All that and more.” “Okay,” I said. It would have been a more moving speech had he not slurred his words. “You remind me of Anna.” “I remind a lot of people of a lot of people,” I answered. “I really have to go.” “So drive,” he said. “Get out.” “No. You remind me of Anna,” he said again. After a second, I put the car in reverse and backed out. I couldn’t make him leave, and I didn’t have to. I’d drive to Gus’s house, and Gus’s parents would make him leave. “You are, of course, familiar,” Van Houten said, “with Antonietta Meo.” “Yeah, no,” I said. I turned on the stereo, and the Swedish hip-hop blared, but Van Houten yelled over it. “She may soon be the youngest nonmartyr saint ever beatified by the Catholic Church. She had the same cancer that Mr. Waters had, osteosarcoma. They removed her right leg. The pain was excruciating. As Antonietta Meo lay dying at the ripened age of six from this agonizing cancer, she told her father, ‘Pain is like fabric: The stronger it is, the more it’s worth.’ Is that true, Hazel?” I wasn’t looking at him directly but at his reflection in the mirror. “No,” I shouted over the music. “That’s bullshit.” “But don’t you wish it were true!” he cried back. I cut the music. “I’m sorry I ruined your trip. You were too young. You were—” He broke down. As if he had a right to cry over Gus. Van Houten was just another of the endless mourners who did not know him, another too-late lamentation on his wall. “You didn’t ruin our trip, you self-important bastard. We had an awesome trip.” “I am trying,” he said. “I am trying, I swear.” It was around then that I realized Peter Van Houten had a dead person in his family. I considered the honesty with which he had written about cancer kids; the fact that he couldn’t speak to me in Amsterdam except to ask if I’d dressed like her on purpose; his shittiness around me and Augustus; his aching question about the relationship between pain’s extremity and its value. He sat back there drinking, an old man who’d been drunk for years.
”
”
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
“
Maxims & Other Quotes II
Exactly how we deal with our souls was at this moment the only question I thought worth asking. 181
Borges: What I most admire about Whitman is that he created Walt Whitman, an ideal projection not of himself but someone like him, a character every reader could find in his heart and admire. 184
Borges: Mythos, in Greek, is not a story that is false, it’s a story that is more than true. Myth is a tear in the fabric of reality, and immense energies pour through those holy fissures. Our stories, our poems, are rips in these holy fissures, as well, however slight. 193
Borges: Don’t question survival, mine or yours. More powers lie at your disposal than you realize. 194
Parini: I just don’t know enough.
Borges: Nor I. But we all proceed on insufficient knowledge. 195
Borges: I’ve found a name for myself. Borges the Reenactor! The problem is, one never wins old battles. The losses only mount. 250
Borges: Remember that the battle between good and evil persists, and the writer’s work is constantly to reframe the argument, so that readers make the right choices. Never work from vanity. … What does Eliot say? ‘Humility is endless’ … We fail, and we fail again. We pick ourselves up. I’ve done it a thousand times, Guiseppe. Borges only deepens. 251
”
”
Jay Parini (Borges and Me: An Encounter)
“
Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead, I guess, in deep blank space high up above many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me, and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long, curved band of color. As I came closer, I saw that it stretched endlessly in either direction, and I understood that I was seeing all the time of the planet where I had lived. It looked like a woman’s tweed scarf; the longer I studied any one spot, the more dots of color I saw. There was no end to the deepness and variety of dots. At length I started to look for my time, but, although more and more specks of color and deeper and more intricate textures appeared in the fabric, I couldn’t find my time, or any time at all that I recognized as being near my time. I couldn’t make out so much as a pyramid. Yet as I looked at the band of time, all the individual people, I understood with special clarity, were living at that very moment with great emotion, in intricate, detail, in their individual times and places, and they were dying and being replaced by ever more people, one by one, like stitches in which wholly worlds of feeling and energy were wrapped in a never-ending cloth. I remembered suddenly the color and texture of our life as we knew it- these things had been utterly forgotten- and I thought as I searched for it on the limitless band, “that was a good time then, a good time to be living.” And I began to remember our time.
I recalled green fields with carrots growing, one by one, in slender rows. Men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots out of the soil and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water. I saw white-faced cattle lowing and wading in creeks. I saw May apples in forests, erupting through leaf-strewn paths. Cells on the root hairs of sycamores split and divided, and apples grew spotted and striped in the fall. Mountains kept their cool caves and squirrels raced home to their nests through sunlight and shade.
I remembered the ocean, and I seemed to be in the ocean myself, swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school. Or again I saw the tops of poplars, and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wild ducks flew with outstretched necks, and called, one by one, and flew on.
All these things I saw. Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail before my eyes, and were replaced by ever more scenes, as I remember the life of my time with increasing feeling.
At last I saw the earth as a globe in space, and I recalled the ocean’s shape and the form of continents, saying to myself with surprise as I looked at the planet, “yes, that’s how it was then, that part there was called France.” I was filled with the deep affection of nostalgia- and then I opened my eyes.
We all ought to be able to conjure up sights like these at will, so that we can keep in mind the scope of texture’s motion in time.
”
”
Annie Dillard
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In the tapestry of existence, music is the thread that weaves emotions into the fabric of our hearts, creating a symphony of peace that resonates through the soul.
”
”
Shree Shambav (Death: Light of Life and the Shadow of Death)
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What genre do you like?” He winks at me. “Dark romance where the heroine gets fucked by the psychopaths.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
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No—I knew the moment I saw you. You were not to be pitied. Your mind is a beautiful and dangerous thing, Wynn, sick as it may be. But your soul illuminates the world around you, setting all else ablaze with your inevitable anguish.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
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Yeah, her soul is like chiffon, with plenty of tattered rips and tears. The fabric of our souls is thin and worn. We must be gentle and love tirelessly
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
Yeah, her soul is like chiffon, with plenty of tattered rips and tears. The fabric of our souls is thin and worn. We must be gentle and love tirelessly.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
I—I don’t want to be this character anymore.” I press my hand to my chest. “I can’t keep waking up and being disappointed with who I see in the mirror. I don’t want to be me.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
That’s what the real world does to us, isn’t it? Grind, grind, grind for forty-plus hours a week just to stand at the grocery store and worry about whether you can afford food.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
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I’m the cold-hearted villain in everyone’s story, according to most of my loved ones, while ironically also having a heart condition that will eventually kill me. Lucky me. If this is God’s great design for me, then I’m good. I’m tapping out.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
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Whoever coined the phrase “sticks and stones” is an asshole, don’t you think?
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
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Why can’t you just… not be like this?
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”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
Hi, Wynn, my name is Poppie. I like reading books when I’m not dying inside.
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”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
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Lanston Nevers. I like coffee and taking long naps, and I want to die.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
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She’s beautiful. If I let her, she’ll break my heart a million times until she can no longer find a weak spot in my armor. We hurt each other. That’s what I’ve learned so far . We’re each other’s pain.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
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The need to feel pain is almost completely gone when I’m with her.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
Lanston pulls him in for a tight hug and pats him on the shoulder before getting up to leave. Lanston has a harder time with tragic topics—even in group sessions, he excuses himself frequently.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
We sit silently for a moment before I tap on the search bar and type in my name. Before I can hit search, Liam grabs my wrist and stops me. “I don’t want to know,” he says plainly. “Why not?” “I don’t want to know what made you want to die, Wynn.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
She’s special, Liam. I know you like her, but be careful. Her mind is her worst enemy and love might be too overbearing on fabric as thin as hers.” My brows pull together. “Fabric as thin as hers?” “Yeah, her soul is like chiffon, with plenty of tattered rips and tears. The fabric of our souls is thin and worn. We must be gentle and love tirelessly.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
In the grand tapestry of existence, we are faced with a profound choice: to believe in God or reduce ourselves to mere dust. Yet, in this choice lies the very essence of our potential and purpose. God, the eternal enigma, represents the boundless mysteries that surround us, the cosmic symphony of order and chaos. To believe in God is to embrace the unfathomable depths of our existence, to recognize the awe-inspiring beauty in every breath, and to find solace in the face of adversity. It is to acknowledge that we are part of something greater, intricately connected to the divine fabric of creation. On the other hand, to resign ourselves to dust is to surrender our capacity for wonder and curiosity. It is to reduce the majesty of life to a mere collection of atoms, devoid of meaning or significance. In the realm of dust, there is no purpose, no guiding light to illuminate our path, only the relentless march of time eroding all that we hold dear. But let us not forget that the choice between God and dust is not a binary one. It is a spectrum that spans the vast landscape of human belief and understanding. Some find solace in the embrace of a divine being, while others seek meaning in the interconnectedness of all things. And there are those who find their own truth, crafting a personal philosophy that resonates with their soul. Ultimately, whether we believe in God or embrace our dusty origins, let us remember that it is our capacity for reflection, compassion, and growth that defines us as sentient beings. It is through the pursuit of wisdom and the cultivation of love that we find the true essence of our existence, transcending the limitations of belief or disbelief. So, let us choose wisely, for in the contemplation of God or dust, we shape not only our own destiny but also the destiny of humanity itself. May we find the courage to explore the depths of our beliefs and the humility to appreciate the vastness of the unknown. And in doing so, may we discover the profound beauty that lies within the delicate balance between faith and reason.
”
”
D.L. Lewis
“
Monster. Demon. Evil. Insufferable child. Miserable bitch. Though they all hurt and damaged me in unique ways, I think one was worse. One broke me, unlike the rest. One made me realize that perhaps death would be the only cry loud enough to be heard. No one heard me. No one ever fucking heard me. “Being told that I was, inevitably, going to kill people. Being told that they could see the sinister evil inside my soul. That looking at me made them sick.” I choke on tears and swallow hard, blinking past the emotions and fighting all my inner safety walls to get the words out. “That I was better off dead. Because all my existence did was make them wish to die.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
I saw a young woman. A confused little flower trying to bloom in the daylight when you were always meant to thrive beneath the stars, unlike those around you. You’ve wilted enough for the world. Don’t you think?
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K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
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It’s time to let go of the things that hurt.
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”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
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So that I can love you the way you deserve to be loved.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
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because no great piece of art is made without a little suffering backing it.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
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Everything that isn’t you. My life before you. Make me forget all the tragedies so that I can—
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
But it will always be him, won’t it?” he whispers.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
Why didn’t anyone help me? Didn’t I ask more than once? Didn’t my eyes scream loud enough for those that observed me so callously to stop?
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
Mom: Your brother is coming to get you. Please be nice to him. He loves you.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
I’m so tired and… it hurts. I’m hurt.
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”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
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He shot me. I don’t feel anything… but I know he shot me.
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”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
You have to pull through, Wynn. You will always have my heart. Always
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
Come on, we need to catch up or we’ll get left behind.
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”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
Lanston shakes his head. “Not this time, baby. Go on ahead without me. I’ll see you two later.” I hesitate. Our hands are clasped tight. I never want to let go. “Are you sure?” I ask, tracing his cheek with my forefinger and memorizing his lovely features, those kind hazel eyes and high cheekbones. “Yeah. I’m sure.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
I’m so fucking relieved he wasn’t there.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
“
His last request was that you receive his heart.
”
”
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)
K.M. Moronova (The Fabric of Our Souls)