“
Don't." Clary raised a warning hand. "I'm not really in the mood right now."
"That's got to be the first time a girl's ever said that to me," Jace mused.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
“
You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.
What mood is that?
Last-minute panic.
”
”
Bill Watterson
“
Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence– whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.
”
”
Edgar Allan Poe (The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe)
“
Don't tell me," Jace said, "Simon's turned himself into an ocelot and you want me to do something about it before Isabelle makes him into a stole. Well, you'll have have to wait till tomorrow. I'm out of commission." He pointed at himself - he was wearing blue pajamas with a hole in the sleeve. "Look. Jammies."
"Jace," Clary said, "this is important."
"Don't tell me," he said. "You've got a drawing emergency. You need a nude model. Well, I'm not in the mood. You could always ask Hodge," he said as an afterthought. "I hear he'll do anything for a -"
"JACE!" she interrupted him, her voice rising to a scream. "JUST SHUT UP FOR A SECOND AND LISTEN, WILL YOU?
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
“
The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.
”
”
Voltaire
“
If I can't feel, if I can't move, if I can't think, and I can't care, then what conceivable point is there in living?
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, 'Do trousers matter?'"
"The mood will pass, sir.
”
”
P.G. Wodehouse (The Code of the Woosters (Jeeves, #7))
“
I can be quite sarcastic when I'm in the mood.
”
”
J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)
“
You can only be in a bad mood for so long before you have to face up to the fact that it isn't a bad mood at all; it's just your sucky personality.
”
”
Megan McCafferty (Sloppy Firsts (Jessica Darling, #1))
“
From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.
”
”
Betty Smith (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
“
Some days seem to fit together like a stained glass window. A hundred little pieces of different color and mood that, when combined, create a complete picture.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (Shiver (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #1))
“
People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.
”
”
Diane Setterfield (The Thirteenth Tale)
“
Looks like someone had a mood swing.” She rolls her eyes. “Like you don’t want to
know what his fears are. He acts so tough that he’s probably afraid of marshmallows
and really bright sunrises or something.
”
”
Veronica Roth (Divergent (Divergent, #1))
“
I am in the mood to dissolve in the sky.
”
”
Virginia Woolf
“
Death should take me while I am in the mood.
”
”
Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Blithedale Romance)
“
Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
“
Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, and they might even try, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: you are irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You're frightened, and you're frightening, and you're "not at all like yourself but will be soon," but you know you won't.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
That which is around me does not affect my mood; my mood affects that which is around me.
”
”
Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain)
“
You're in an awfully good mood," he observed. "Was there a sale at Khakis-R-Us?
”
”
Richelle Mead (The Golden Lily (Bloodlines, #2))
“
A boy may be as disagreeable as he pleases, but when a girl refuses to crap sunshine on command, the world mutters darkly about her moods.
”
”
Scott Lynch (The Republic of Thieves (Gentleman Bastard, #3))
“
I didn't want to spoil the mood. This was probably the longest Daemon and I had ever spoken without some statement earning him the finger.
”
”
Jennifer L. Armentrout (Obsidian (Lux, #1))
“
That was so completely unfair that I told Tantalus to go chase a donut, which didn't help his mood.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2))
“
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is like a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue. . . .
”
”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“
Nico," I said at last, "shouldn't you be sitting at the Hades table?"
He shrugged. "Technically, yes. But if I sit alone at my table, strange things happen. Cracks open in the floor. Zombies crawl out and start roaming around. It's a mood disorder. I can't control it. That's what I told Chiron. "
"And is it true?" I asked.
Nico smiled thinly. "I have a note from my doctor."
Will raised his hand. "I'm his doctor.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Hidden Oracle (The Trials of Apollo, #1))
“
A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.
”
”
Edgar Allan Poe
“
I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.
”
”
Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time)
“
What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises—no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for fighting.
”
”
Frank Herbert (Dune (Dune, #1))
“
Mike nodded. A sombre nod. The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody had met him in 1812 and said, "So, you're back from Moscow, eh?
”
”
P.G. Wodehouse (Mike and Psmith (Psmith, #1))
“
In some parallel universe, there was a Gansey who could tell Blue that he found the ten inches of her bare calves far more tantalizing than the thirteen cubic feet of bare skin Orla sported. But in this universe, that was Adam’s job.
He was in a terrible mood.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2))
“
I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been midly manic. When I am my present "normal" self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In short, for myself, I am a hard act to follow.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
I have mood poisoning. Must be something I hate.
”
”
Marilyn Manson
“
Either get out of bed or else take your clothes off," he said. "I'm not in the mood to compromise.
”
”
Janet Evanovich
“
My mother once told me that no woman is naked when she comes equipped with a bad mood and a steady glare.
”
”
Mira Grant (Feed (Newsflesh, #1))
“
I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.
”
”
P.G. Wodehouse (The Code of the Woosters (Jeeves, #7))
“
No amount of love can cure madness or unblacken one's dark moods. Love can help, it can make the pain more tolerable, but, always, one is beholden to medication that may or may not always work and may or may not be bearable
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
So what you're saying is, I'm your brand of heroin?" I teased, trying to lighten the mood.
He smiled swiftly, seeming to appreciate my effort. "Yes, you are exactly my brand of heroin.
”
”
Stephenie Meyer (Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1))
“
You're miserable, edgy and tired. You're in the perfect mood for journalism.
”
”
Warren Ellis
“
Except you cannot outrun insanity, anymore than you can outrun your own shadow.
”
”
Alyssa Reyans (Letters from a Bipolar Mother (Chronicles of A Fractured Life))
“
But then anyone who's worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm.
”
”
Virginia Woolf
“
Solitude was my only consolation - deep, dark, deathlike solitude.
”
”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
“
I've had it with being nice, understanding, fair and hopeful. I feel like being negative all day. The chip on my shoulder could sink the QE2. I've got an attitude problem and nobody better get in my way...I'm in a bad mood and the whole stupid little world is gonna pay!
”
”
John Waters (Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters)
“
It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative - which ever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it.
”
”
Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)
“
By now it was clear that Howl was in a mood to produce green slime any second. Sophie hurriedly put her sewing away. "I'll make some hot buttered toast," she said. "Is that all you can do in the face of tragedy??" Howl asked. "Make toast!
”
”
Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1))
“
The highly sensitive [introverted] tend to be philosophical or spiritual in their orientation, rather than materialistic or hedonistic. They dislike small talk. They often describe themselves as creative or intuitive. They dream vividly, and can often recall their dreams the next day. They love music, nature, art, physical beauty. They feel exceptionally strong emotions--sometimes acute bouts of joy, but also sorrow, melancholy, and fear. Highly sensitive people also process information about their environments--both physical and emotional--unusually deeply. They tend to notice subtleties that others miss--another person's shift in mood, say, or a lightbulb burning a touch too brightly.
”
”
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
flux, n.
The natural state. Our moods change. Our lives change. Our feelings for each other change. Our bearings change. The song changes. The air changes. The temperature of the shower changes.
Accept this. We must accept this.
”
”
David Levithan (The Lover's Dictionary)
“
Listen, I’m the freak. I’m the weirdo. I’m the troublemaker. I start fights. I let people down. Don’t make Finch mad, whatever you do. Oh, there he goes again, in one of his moods. Moody Finch. Angry Finch. Unpredictable Finch. Crazy Finch. But I’m not a compilation of symptoms. Not a casualty of shitty parents and an even shittier chemical makeup. Not a problem. Not a diagnosis. Not an illness. Not something to be rescued. I’m a person.
”
”
Jennifer Niven (All the Bright Places)
“
I have no idea how he knows when I need him. We can go weeks without speaking, and then, when my blue moods threaten to turn black, he will show up and tell me my moods are
azure
indigo
cerulean
cobalt
periwinkle
and suddenly the blue will not seem so dark, more like the color of a noon-bright sky.
He brings the sun.
”
”
David Levithan (The Realm of Possibility)
“
In my opinon, the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you, the right person will still think the sun shines out your ass. That's the kind of person that's worth sticking with.
”
”
Diablo Cody (Juno: The Shooting Script)
“
Tris," he says. "What did they do to you? You're acting like a lunatic."
"That's not very nice of you to say," I say. "They put me in a good mood, that's all. And now I really want to kiss you, so if you could just relax-
”
”
Veronica Roth (Insurgent (Divergent, #2))
“
If you're in bad mood, take a deep breath.
If you're in good mood, give thanks to God.
”
”
Toba Beta (My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut)
“
I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.
”
”
Haim G. Ginott (Teacher and Child: A Book for Parents and Teachers)
“
She was a free bird one minute: queen of the world and laughing. The next minute she would be in tears like a porcelain angel, about to teeter, fall and break. She never cried because she was afraid that something 'would' happen; she would cry because she feared something that could render the world more beautiful, 'would not' happen.
”
”
Roman Payne (The Wanderess)
“
For a moment I felt joyful, and then I felt completely exhausted.
”
”
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
“
I'll never wake up in a good mood again.
I'm tired of these stinky boots
”
”
Jim Morrison (An American Prayer)
“
People around you, constantly under the pull of their emotions, change their ideas by the day or by the hour, depending on their mood. You must never assume that what people say or do in a particular moment is a statement of their permanent desires.
”
”
Robert Greene (Mastery)
“
Ready?"
Despite the grim mood, I smiled and cracked my knuckles.
"Ready to wrestle with my gorgeous boyfriend? Oh, I'd say I'm ready for that."
Amusement softened his eyes.
"I'll try to control where I put my hands, but in the heat of things, who knows what could happen?" I added.
Patch grinned. "Sounds promising.
”
”
Becca Fitzpatrick (Finale (Hush, Hush, #4))
“
Clouds suit my mood just fine.
”
”
Marie Lu (Champion (Legend, #3))
“
The happiness of those who want to be popular depends on others; the happiness of those who seek pleasure fluctuates with moods outside their control; but the happiness of the wise grows out of their own free acts.
”
”
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
“
My first feeling was that there was no way to continue. Writing isn't like math;in math, two plus two always equals four no matter what your mood is like. With writing, the way you feel changes everything.
”
”
Stephenie Meyer (Midnight Sun [2008 Draft])
“
Annabeth’s shoulders ached. The elevator’s easy-listening music didn’t help. If all monsters had to hear that song about liking piña coladas and getting caught in the rain, no wonder they were in the mood for carnage when they reached the mortal world.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus, #4))
“
Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them, is, by far, the highest card I was dealt.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
Does your ma know you're this silly?" she demanded tartly.
He nodded, comically sad. "The few gray hairs she has on her head are my doing. But" — with an exaggerated change of mood — "I send her plenty of money, so she can pay to have them dyed!"
"I hope she beat you as a child," Onua grumbled.
”
”
Tamora Pierce (Wild Magic (Immortals, #1))
“
I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.
”
”
Haim G. Ginott
“
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
”
”
William Wordsworth (I Wander'd Lonely as a Cloud)
“
Reading was like a drug, a dope. The novels created moods in which I lived for days.
”
”
Richard Wright (Black Boy)
“
I?
I walk alone;
The midnight street
Spins itself from under my feet;
My eyes shut
These dreaming houses all snuff out;
Through a whim of mine
Over gables the moon's celestial onion
Hangs high.
I
Make houses shrink
And trees diminish
By going far; my look's leash
Dangles the puppet-people
Who, unaware how they dwindle,
Laugh, kiss, get drunk,
Nor guess that if I choose to blink
They die.
I
When in good humour,
Give grass its green
Blazon sky blue, and endow the sun
With gold;
Yet, in my wintriest moods, I hold
Absolute power
To boycott color and forbid any flower
To be.
I
Know you appear
Vivid at my side,
Denying you sprang out of my head,
Claiming you feel
Love fiery enough to prove flesh real,
Though it's quite clear
All your beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear,
From me.
"Soliloquy of the Solipsist", 1956
”
”
Sylvia Plath (The Collected Poems)
“
You see, Jude, in life, sometimes nice things happen to good people. You don’t need to worry—they don’t happen as often as they should. But when they do, it’s up to the good people to just say ‘thank you,’ and move on, and maybe consider that the person who’s doing the nice thing gets a bang out of it as well, and really isn’t in the mood to hear all the reasons that the person for whom he’s done the nice thing doesn’t think he deserves it or isn’t worthy of it.
”
”
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
“
When people are suicidal, their thinking is paralyzed, their options appear spare or nonexistent, their mood is despairing, and hopelessness permeates their entire mental domain. The future cannot be separated from the present, and the present is painful beyond solace. ‘This is my last experiment,’ wrote a young chemist in his suicide note. ‘If there is any eternal torment worse than mine I’ll have to be shown.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide)
“
There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you're high it's tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty. There are interests found in uninteresting people. Sensuality is pervasive and the desire to seduce and be seduced irresistible. Feelings of ease, intensity, power, well-being, financial omnipotence, and euphoria pervade one's marrow. But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Memory goes. Humor and absorption on friends' faces are replaced by fear and concern. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against-- you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind. You never knew those caves were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
Love, like life, is much stranger and far more complicated than one is brought up to believe.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
I’m not mad. I’m in a perfectly happy mood, you asshole.
”
”
Kurt Cobain
“
If you are in a bad mood go for a walk.If you are still in a bad mood go for another walk.
”
”
Hippocrates
“
Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.
”
”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“
I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.
”
”
Pearl S. Buck
“
You're the only man I know who can have sex with a woman who looks that good and be in this bad a mood ten minutes later. Damn, didn't you know sex is supposed to make you feel better? (Nick)
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Night Pleasures (Dark-Hunter #1))
“
I never felt like that before. Maybe it could be depression, like you get. I can understand how you suffer now when you're depressed; I always thought you liked it and I thought you could have snapped yourself out any time, if not alone then by means of the mood organ. But when you get that depressed you don't care. Apathy, because you've lost a sense of worth. It doesn't matter whether you feel better because you have no worth.
”
”
Philip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)
“
She was a wicked thing sometimes. All full of want. As if the shape of the world depended on her mood. As if she were important.
”
”
Patrick Rothfuss (The Slow Regard of Silent Things (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2.5))
“
One of the most difficult things he'd ever done was turn away and leave her standing in the shadows.
”
”
Rachel Gibson (I'm In No Mood For Love (Writer Friends, #2))
“
We’re never gonna understand women. They’re way too complex. You’ve got too many variables to consider. PMS, bad hair days, miscellaneous mood swings . . . there’s no way to tell what’s causing their attitude.
- Mike
”
”
Susane Colasanti (When It Happens)
“
Doing something positive will help turn your mood around. When you smile, your body relaxes. When you experience human touch and interaction, it eases tension in your body.
”
”
Simone Elkeles (Return to Paradise (Leaving Paradise, #2))
“
But money spent while manic doesn't fit into the Internal Revenue Service concept of medical expense or business loss. So after mania, when most depressed, you're given excellent reason to be even more so.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away — yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit ——————————— and wanted to shoot myself.
”
”
Søren Kierkegaard
“
Men
They hail you as their morning star
Because you are the way you are.
If you return the sentiment,
They'll try to make you different;
And once they have you, safe and sound,
They want to change you all around.
Your moods and ways they put a curse on;
They'd make of you another person.
They cannot let you go your gait;
They influence and educate.
They'd alter all that they admired.
They make me sick, they make me tired.
”
”
Dorothy Parker (The Portable Dorothy Parker)
“
We all move uneasily within our restraints.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
The beautiful thing is, music can be like a time machine. One song- the lyrics, the melody, the mood- can take you back to a moment in time like nothing else can.
”
”
Lisa Schroeder (Chasing Brooklyn)
“
I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be... This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages...the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide... Far too many people misunderstand what *putting away childish things* means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-three-year-old means being grownup. When I'm with these people I, like the kids, feel that if this is what it means to be a grown-up, then I don't ever want to be one. Instead of which, if I can retain a child's awareness and joy, and *be* fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grownup.
”
”
Madeleine L'Engle
“
I only ever have two moods. It's either
I'll kill you or
Someone kill me~
”
”
Nashita
“
Friendship is less simple. It is long and hard to obtain but when one has it there's no getting rid of it; one simply has to cope with it. Don't think for a minute that your friends will telephone you every evening, as they ought to, in order to find out if this doesn't happen to be the evening when you are deciding to commit suicide, or simply whether you don't need company, whether you are not in the mood to go out. No, don't worry, they'll ring up the evening you are not alone, when life is beautiful. As for suicide, they would be more likely to push you to it, by virtue of what you owe to yourself, according to them. May heaven protect us, cher Monsieur, from being set upon a pedestal by our friends!
”
”
Albert Camus (The Fall)
“
It's not always easy to distinguish between existentialism and a bad mood.
”
”
Matthew Woodring Stover (Blade of Tyshalle (The Acts of Caine #2))
“
Which of my feelings are real? Which of the me's is me? The wild, impulsive, chaotic, energetic, and crazy one? Or the shy, withdrawn, desperate, suicidal, doomed, and tired one? Probably a bit of both, hopefully much that is neither.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
anyone who’s worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm.
”
”
Virginia Woolf (Jacob's Room)
“
From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood.
”
”
Betty Smith (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
“
How we see the world changes all the time. It all depends on our mood.
”
”
Sarah Addison Allen (The Girl Who Chased the Moon)
“
I am tired of hiding, tired of misspent and knotted energies, tired of the hypocrisy, and tired of acting as though I have something to hide.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.
”
”
Stanley Kubrick
“
You are all that, Catalina. You are light. And passion. Your laughter alone can lift my mood and effortlessly turn my day around in a matter of seconds. Even when it's not aimed at me. You... can light up entire rooms, Catalina. You hold that kind of power. And it's because of all the different things that make you who you are. Each and every one of them, even the ones that drive me crazy in ways you can't imagine. You should never forget that.
”
”
Elena Armas (The Spanish Love Deception (Spanish Love Deception, #1))
“
The leaf fall of his words, the stained glass hues of his moods, the rust in his voice, the smoke in his mouth, his breath on my vision like human breath blinding a mirror.
”
”
Anaïs Nin (House of Incest)
“
Somehow, like so many people who get depressed, we felt our depressions were more complicated and existentially based than they actually were.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
I was difficult. An emotionally challenging puzzle he wasn’t up for solving.
Which was fine. I wasn’t in the mood to be solved
”
”
Colleen Hoover (Verity)
“
Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it, an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not infrequently, suicide.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
But, with time, one has encountered many of the monsters, and one is increasingly less terrified of those still to be met.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
It's so hard to believe in anything anymore. I mean, it's like, religion, you really can't take it seriously, because it seems so mythological, it seems so arbitrary...but, on the other hand, science is just pure empiricism, and by virtue of its method, it excludes metaphysics. I guess I wouldn't believe in anything anymore if it weren't for my lucky astrology mood watch.
”
”
Steve Martin
“
Rhys’s lip pulled back from his teeth. “I dare you.” Temper—he had to be in some mood today to let his temper show this much. Good. That made two of us. I flung my other shoe right at his head, as swift and hard as the first one.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
This kid has more mood swings than a toddler's birthday party.
”
”
Alexandra Bracken (Never Fade (The Darkest Minds, #2))
“
Books became her friends, and there was one for every mood.
”
”
Betty Smith (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
“
You can find me in the frozen mood section.
”
”
Henry Rollins (Solipsist)
“
We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this--through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication, we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year;
And you must welcome from another part
Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.
No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell
Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;
And I have loved you all too long and well
To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring.
Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,
I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.
Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another clime.
”
”
Edna St. Vincent Millay (Collected Poems)
“
There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt. There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo.
”
”
Beryl Markham (West with the Night)
“
One of the things I love about books is being able to define and condense certain portions of a character's life into chapters. It's intriguing, because you can't do this with real life. You can't just end a chapter, then skip the things you don't want to live through, only to open it up to a chapter that better suits your mood. Life can't be divided into chapters... only minutes. The events of your life are all crammed together one minute right after the other without any time lapses or blank pages or chapter breaks because no matter what happens life just keeps going and moving forward and words keep flowing and truths keep spewing whether you like it or not and life never lets you pause and just catch your fucking breath.
I need one of those chapter breaks. I just want to catch my breath, but I have no idea how.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (Hopeless (Hopeless, #1))
“
I argued that physical discomfort is important only when the mood is wrong. Then you fasten on to whatever thing is uncomfortable and call that the cause. But if the mood is right, then physical discomfort doesn't mean much.
”
”
Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values (Phaedrus, #1))
“
I often find that a novel, even a well-written and compelling novel, can become a blur to me soon after I've finished reading it. I recollect perfectly the feeling of reading it, the mood I occupied, but I am less sure about the narrative details. It is almost as if the book were, as Wittgenstein said of his propositions, a ladder to be climbed and then discarded after it has served its purpose.
”
”
Sven Birkerts (The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age)
“
No pill can help me deal with the problem of not wanting to take pills; likewise, no amount of psychotherapy alone can prevent my manias and depressions. I need both. It is an odd thing, owing life to pills, one's own quirks and tenacities, and this unique, strange, and ultimately profound relationship called psychotherapy
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
We may wonder what is going on in the back of the mind and what betides in the mood of some people who live on the edge of isolation and emotional poverty. They belong to life’s outcasts: deserted by affection, deprived of physical or lingual contact and finally reduced to silence. ("Why didn't he ask ? ")
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.
No answer, no coming out of it.
Which is the only way to love, isn’t it?
This isn’t a play ground, this is
earth, our heaven, for a while.
Therefore I have given precedence
to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods
that hold you in the center of my world.
And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.
And I say to my heart: rave on.
”
”
Mary Oliver (Thirst)
“
Niall had been able to mask the odor of fairy from Eric in the restaurant, but I saw from the flare of Eric's nostrils that the intoxicating scent clung to me. Eric's eyes closed in ecstasy, and he actually licked his lips. I felt like a T-bone just out of reach of a hungry dog.
"Snap out of it," I said. I wasn't in the mood.
With a huge effort, Eric reigned himself in. "When you smell like that," he said, "I just wanna fuck you and bite you and rub myself all over you.
”
”
Charlaine Harris
“
Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain.
”
”
Oscar Wilde (De Profundis and Other Writings)
“
Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self -- to the mediating intellect-- as to verge close to being beyond description. It thus remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it in its extreme mode.
”
”
William Styron (Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness)
“
ʺWhere is it?ʺ I asked.
ʺLexington, Kentucky.ʺ
ʺOh for Godʹs sake,ʺ I moaned. ʺWhy not the Bahamas? Or the Corn Palace?ʺ
Dimitri tried to hide a smile. It might have been at my expense, but if Iʹd lightened his mood, I was grateful. ʺIf we leave right now, we can reach him before morning.ʺ
I glanced around. ʺTough choice. Leave all this for electricity and plumbing?ʺ
Now Sydney grinned.
ʺAnd no more marriage proposals.ʺ
ʺAnd weʹll probably have to fight Strigoi,ʺ added Dimitri.
I jumped to my feet. ʺHow soon can we go?ʺ
”
”
Richelle Mead (Last Sacrifice (Vampire Academy, #6))
“
I look back over my shoulder and feel the presence of an intense young girl and then a volatile and disturbed young woman, both with high dreams and restless, romantic aspirations
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
I have never seen battles quite as terrifyingly beautiful as the ones I fight when my mind splinters and races, to swallow me into my own madness, again.
”
”
Nicole Lyons (Hush)
“
Bipolar robs you of that which is you. It can take from you the very core of your being and replace it with something that is completely opposite of who and what you truly are. Because my bipolar went untreated for so long, I spent many years looking in the mirror and seeing a person I did not recognize or understand. Not only did bipolar rob me of my sanity, but it robbed me of my ability to see beyond the space it dictated me to look. I no longer could tell reality from fantasy, and I walked in a world no longer my own.
”
”
Alyssa Reyans (Letters from a Bipolar Mother (Chronicles of A Fractured Life))
“
Flirtation doesn't have to go somewhere; it certainly doesn't need to end up in bed. I like to think of it as a little friendlier than a handshake, a little less intimate than a kiss. It's a way of saying hi, you look great, have a wonderful day. A tasteful flirtation, played out people who understand the rules, leave everyone feeling good and can perk up the bluest mood.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Bloodfever (Fever, #2))
“
Sometimes we have to behave indifferent towards people who proclaim their love to us, just to see if they are really different.
”
”
Michael Bassey Johnson
“
But I am very poorly today & very stupid & I hate everybody & everything. One lives only to make blunders.
”
”
Charles Darwin (The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, Volume 9: 1861)
“
About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough—and even miraculous enough if you insist—I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about?
Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don't believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart's content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others—while in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity—so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities… but there, there. Enough.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
“
I decided early in graduate school that I needed to do something about my moods. It quickly came down to a choice between seeing a psychiatrist or buying a horse. Since almost everyone I knew was seeing a psychiatrist, and since I had an absolute belief that I should be able to handle my own problems, I naturally bought a horse.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
I guess we'd better move the trash. We can start with the Dumpster." He pointed at it, looking distinctly unenthusiastic.
"You'd rather face a ravening horde of demons, wouldn't you?" Clary said.
"At least they wouldn't be crawling with maggots. Well," he added thoughtfully, "not most of them, anyway. There was this one demon, once, that I tracked down to the sewers under Grand Central—"
"Don't." Clary raised a warning hand. "I'm not really in the mood right now."
"That's got to be the first time a girl's ever said that to me," Jace mused.
"Stick with me and it won't be the last."
The corner of Jace's mouth twitched. "This is hardly the time for idle banter. We have garbage to haul.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
“
You told me I was the best sex you'd ever had in your life...You couldn't get enough...At one point you were so loud I thought sure hotel security was going to beat down the door.
”
”
Rachel Gibson (I'm In No Mood For Love (Writer Friends, #2))
“
When a mood of "not belonging" is haunting our mind and tolling the bell for relief or happiness, life may be like a scar on the canvas of our dreams. Now is the time to wake up and slip back to the basics, in the vein of crawling back to mum's lap. ("The grass was greener over there")
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln never saw a movie, heard a radio or looked at television. They had 'Loneliness' and knew what to do with it. They were not afraid of being lonely because they knew that was when the creative mood in them would work.
”
”
Carl Sandburg
“
Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is "man" in a higher sense— he is "collective man"— one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic forms of mankind.
”
”
C.G. Jung
“
Love has, at its best, made the inherent sadness of life bearable, and its beauty manifest.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
If life is slumping down into the algorithms of depression, succumbing to instigating moods of worthlessness, we must endeavor to get out of the rabbit hole of mistrust, shape challenging decisions, pick the fitting fight-or-flight mode, and hit the ground running. ("A glimpse of the future")
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
You'll have a good, secure life when being alive means more to you than security, love more than money, your freedom more than public or partisan opinion, when the mood of Beethoven's or Bach's music becomes the mood of your whole life … when your thinking is in harmony, and no longer in conflict, with your feelings … when you let yourself be guided by the thoughts of great sages and no longer by the crimes of great warriors … when you pay the men and women who teach your children better than the politicians; when truths inspire you and empty formulas repel you; when you communicate with your fellow workers in foreign countries directly, and no longer through diplomats...
”
”
Wilhelm Reich (Listen, Little Man!)
“
Nico,” I said at last, “shouldn’t you be sitting at the Hades table?”
He shrugged. “Technically, yes. But if I sit alone at my table, strange things happen. Cracks open in the floor. Zombies crawl out and start roaming around. It’s a mood disorder. I can’t control it. That’s what I told Chiron.”
“And is it true?” I asked.
Nico smiled thinly. “I have a note from my doctor.”
Will raised his hand. “I’m his doctor.”
“Chiron decided it wasn’t worth arguing about,” Nico said. “As long as I sit at a table with other people, like…oh, these guys for instance…the zombies stay away. Everybody’s happier.”
Will nodded serenely. “It’s the strangest thing. Not that Nico would ever misuse his powers to get what he wants.”
“Of course not,” Nico agreed.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Hidden Oracle (The Trials of Apollo, #1))
“
Bastian looked at the book.
'I wonder,' he said to himself, 'what's in a book while it's closed. Oh, I know it's full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must be happening, because as soon as I open it, there's a whole story with people I don't know yet and all kinds of adventures, deeds and battles. And sometimes there are storms at sea, or it takes you to strange cities and countries. All those things are somehow shut in a book. Of course you have to read it to find out. But it's already there, that's the funny thing. I just wish I knew how it could be.'
Suddenly an almost festive mood came over him.
He settled himself down, picked up the book, opened it to the first page, and began to read...
”
”
Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)
“
There are certain children who are told they are too sensitive, and there are certain adults who believe sensitivity is a problem that can be fixed in the way that crooked teeth can be fixed and made straight. And when these two come together you get a fairytale, a kind of story with hopelessness in it.
I believe there is something in these old stories that does what singing does to words. They have transformational capabilities, in the way melody can transform mood.
They can't transform your actual situation, but they can transform your experience of it. We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay. I believe we have always done this, used images to stand and understand what otherwise would be intolerable.
”
”
Lynda Barry (What It Is)
“
We need a ride. We're stranded."
"We still have two legs, leftie and rightie. Mine are in the mood for exercise. They feel like a nice long walk--ARE YOU CRAZY?" she shrieked.
I was standing with the tip of the beach umbrella aimed at the driver's-side window. "What?" I said. "We have to get in.
”
”
Becca Fitzpatrick (Crescendo (Hush, Hush, #2))
“
You're in a bad mood,' Skulduggery said. 'I understand. I do. You're saying things that you don't really mean. It's OK.'
'I'll kill you both.'
'Hurtful things said in the heat of the moment. We're not going to hold it against you, Bison. We're all friends here.'
Valkyrie nodded. 'We love you Bison.'
'We do,' Skulduggery agreed. 'You're our favourite Necromancer. You're the cuddly one.'
'Shut up,' Dragonclaw said. 'Both of you just shut up.
”
”
Derek Landy (Death Bringer (Skulduggery Pleasant, #6))
“
When we are locked up between a mood of 'transparency' and a feel of 'discretion,' we must clear up our mental muddle, until we find the "golden ratio," and recognize the peak of 'candor.' By hitting the point of recognition and enlightenment, we can make a correct choice and follow the right track ("Unfulfilled meeting")
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
Procrastinating is number three on my Stupid List. You still end up exactly where you didn't want to be, doing exactly what you didn't want to do, withe the only difference being that you lost all that time in between, during which you could have been doing something fun. Even worse, you probably stayed in a stressed-out, crappy mood the whole time you were avoiding it. If you know something is inevitable, do it and get it over with. Move on. Life is short.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Iced (Fever, #6))
“
You know why I don’t leave,” he said again to Damon, who wouldn’t look at him. “You can pretend you don’t care. You can fool the whole world. But I know differently.” It would have been kindest at this point to leave Damon alone, but Stefan wasn’t in a kind mood. “You know that girl you picked up, Rachael?” he added. “The hair was all right, but her eyes were the wrong color. Elena’s eyes were blue.
”
”
L.J. Smith (Dark Reunion (The Vampire Diaries, #4))
“
Men have called me mad; but the question is not settled whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence -- whether much that is glorious -- whether all that is profound -- does not spring from disease of thought -- from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who only dream by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however rudderless or compassless, into the vast ocean of the ‘light ineffable’.
”
”
Edgar Allan Poe (Eleonora)
“
Does everyone feel this way? When I was young, I was perpetually overconfident or insecure. Either I felt completely useless, unattractive, and worthless, or that I was pretty much a success, and everything I did was bound to succeed. When I was confident, I could overcome the hardest challenges. But all it took was the smallest setback for me to be sure that I was utterly worthless. Regaining my self-confidence had nothing to do with success...whether I experienced it as a failure or triumph was utterly dependent on my mood.
”
”
Bernhard Schlink (The Reader)
“
Remember laughing? Laughter enhances the blood flow to the body’s extremities and improves cardiovascular function. Laughter releases endorphins and other natural mood elevating and pain-killing chemicals, improves the transfer of oxygen and nutrients to internal organs.
Laughter boosts the immune system and helps the body fight off disease, cancer cells as well as viral, bacterial and other infections. Being happy is the best cure of all diseases!
”
”
Patch Adams
“
I didn't think I was in a morbid mood, but it appears I am. My mind goes round and round trying to figure things out, but I always come back to the same two things: Loneliness and Death. Life ends before we figure anything out, most importantly how not to be lonely. Solitude is fine. But feeling like you have no one to love - abject lonliness - is not alright.
”
”
Jonathan Ames (My Less Than Secret Life: A Diary, Fiction, Essays)
“
He's not in a very good mood," said Luke, pausing in front of a closed door. "I shut him up in Freaky Pete's office after he nearly killed half my pack with his bare hands. He wouldn't talk to me, so"—Luke shrugged—"I thought of you." He looked from Clary's baffled face to Simon's. "What?"
"I can't believe he came here," Clary said.
"I can't believe you know someone named Freaky Pete," said Simon.
"I know a lot of people," said Luke. "Not that Freaky Pete is strictly people, but I'm hardly one to talk.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2))
“
You want the fairy tale."
"I want a chance at it.
”
”
Rachel Gibson (I'm In No Mood For Love (Writer Friends, #2))
“
She had been looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while to discover that a lover was not a comrade and could never be - for a woman. And that no one would ever be that version of herself which she sought to reach out to and touch with an ungloved hand. There was only her own mood and whim, and if that was all there was, she decided to turn the naked hand toward it, discover it and let others become as intimate with their own selves as she was.
”
”
Toni Morrison (Sula)
“
Kid,” Richard said wearily, “I am not in the mood. I haven’t slept in thirty-six hours, my sister’s crazy–”
“Hey!” Monica protested.
“–and you’re not my high school crush–”
“He is not my high school crush, Richard!”
“The point it, I couldn’t give a crap about you, your friends, or your problems, because for me this isn’t personal. Monica will kill you because she’s nuts. I’ll kill you because you make me kill you. Are we straight?”
“Well,” Shane said, “That’s kind of a personal question.
”
”
Rachel Caine (Glass Houses (The Morganville Vampires, #1))
“
I don't know if I've come of age, but I'm certainly older now. I feel shrunken, as if there's a tiny ancient Oliver Tate inside me operating the levers of a life-size Oliver-shaped shell. A shell on which a decrepit picture show replays the same handful of images. Every night I come to the same place and wait till the sky catches up with my mood. The pattern is set. This is, no doubt, the end.
”
”
Joe Dunthorne (Submarine)
“
I turn and gaze at him midway. Chin up Steele, I chide myself.
“Oh... by the way, I’m wearing your underwear.” I gave him a small smile and pull up the waistband of the boxer briefs I’m wearing so he can see. Christian’s mouth drops open, shocked. What a great reaction. My mood shifts immediately, and I sashay into the house, part of me wanting to jump and punch the air.
”
”
E.L. James
“
Perhaps I am a man of exceptional moods. I do not know how far my
experience is common. At times I suffer from the strangest sense of
detachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it all
from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time,
out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all. This feeling
was very strong upon me that night. Here was another side to my
dream.
”
”
H.G. Wells (The War of the Worlds)
“
Cats were often familiars to workers of magic because to anyone used to wrestling with self-willed, wayward, devious magic—which was what all magic was—it was rather soothing to have all the same qualities wrapped up in a small, furry, generally attractive bundle that looked more or less the same from day to day and might, if it were in a good mood, sit on your knee and purr. Magic never sat on anybody’s knee and purred.
”
”
Robin McKinley (Spindle's End)
“
Some details in life may look insignificant but appear to be vital leitmotifs in a person's life. They may have the value of "Rosebuds" of Citizen Kane or "Madeleine cookies" of Marcel Proust or "Strawberry fields" of the Beatles. People regularly walk down the memory lane of their early youth. The paper boats of their childhood are recurrently floating on the waves of their mind and bring back the mood and the spirit of the early days. They enable us to retreat from the trivial, daily worries and can generate delightful bliss and true joy in a sometimes frantic and chaotic life. ("Paper boats forever" )
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
If you prefer smoke over fire
then get up now and leave.
For I do not intend to perfume
your mind's clothing
with more sooty knowledge.
No, I have something else in mind.
Today I hold a flame in my left hand
and a sword in my right.
There will be no damage control today.
For God is in a mood
to plunder your riches and
fling you nakedly
into such breathtaking poverty
that all that will be left of you
will be a tendency to shine.
So don't just sit around this flame
choking on your mind.
For this is no campfire song
to mindlessly mantra yourself to sleep with.
Jump now into the space
between thoughts
and exit this dream
before I burn the damn place down.
”
”
Adyashanti
“
Woman’s role in creation should be parallel to her role in life. I don’t mean the good earth. I mean the bad earth too, the demon, the instincts, the storms of nature. Tragedies, conflicts, mysteries are personal. Man fabricated a detachment which became fatal. Woman must not fabricate. She must descend into the real womb and expose its secrets and its labyrinths. She must describe it as the city of Fez, with its Arabian Nights gentleness, tranquility and mystery. She must describe the voracious moods, the desires, the worlds contained in each cell of it. For the womb has dreams. It is not as simple as the good earth. I believe at times that man created art out of fear of exploring woman. I believe woman stuttered about herself out of fear of what she had to say. She covered herself with taboos and veils. Man invented a woman to suit his needs. He disposed of her by identifying her with nature and then paraded his contemptuous domination of nature. But woman is not nature only.
She is the mermaid with her fish-tail dipped in the unconscious.
”
”
Anaïs Nin
“
Very well." He sat cross-legged on the floor of the cage. "You haven't run off so you want to talk. I will hear your explanation now."
"Really, Your Majesty? So good of you to condescend. I'll try to use small words and go slow."
"You're wasting my time. I know Jim betrayed me and you're covering for him. This is your chance to dazzle me wih your brillance or baffle me with your bullshit. You won't get another. When I get out, I won't be in the mood to listen.
”
”
Ilona Andrews (Magic Strikes (Kate Daniels, #3))
“
We are uncomfortable because everything in our life keeps changing -- our inner moods, our bodies, our work, the people we love, the world we live in. We can't hold on to anything -- a beautiful sunset, a sweet taste, an intimate moment with a lover, our very existence as the body/mind we call self -- because all things come and go. Lacking any permanent satisfaction, we continuously need another injection of fuel, stimulation, reassurance from loved ones, medicine, exercise, and meditation. We are continually driven to become something more, to experience something else.
”
”
Tara Brach (Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha)
“
Perhaps it is becoming clearer why I felt no romance when you told me that you carried my last letter with you, everywhere you went, for months on end, unopened. This may have served some purpose for you, but whatever it was, surely it bore little resemblance to mine. I never aimed to give you a talisman, an empty vessel to flood with whatever longing, dread, or sorrow happened to be the day's mood. I wrote it because I had something to say to you.
”
”
Maggie Nelson (Bluets)
“
Some people think mental illness is a matter of mood, a matter of personality. They think depression is simply a form of being sad, that OCD is a form of being uptight. They think the soul is sick, not the body. It is, they believe, something that you have some choice over.
I know how wrong this is.
When I was a child, I didn't understand. I would wake up in a new body and wouldn't comprehend why things felt muted, dimmer. Or the opposite--I'd be supercharged, unfocused, like a radio at top volume flipping quickly from station to station. Since I didn't have access to the body's emotions, I assumed the ones I was feeling were my own. Eventually, though, I realized these inclinations, these compulsions, were as much a part of the body as its eye color or its voice. Yes, the feelings themselves were intangible, amorphous, but the cause of the feelings was a matter of chemistry, biology.
It is a hard cycle to conquer. The body is working against you. And because of this, you feel even more despair. Which only amplifies the imbalance. It takes uncommon strength to live with these things. But I have seen that strength over and over again.
”
”
David Levithan (Every Day (Every Day, #1))
“
Simone said, "Do me a favor. Picture a map of the world."
I was not in the mood. She said, "Just picture it." So I did.
And she said, "And you're in L.A. You're a blinking light, you with me so far?"
And I said, "Sure."
"And you know you blink brighter than anybody. You get that, don't you?"
And I said, "Sure." Just humoring her.
And then she said, "And then in New York today, and London on Thursday and Barcelona next week, there's another blinking light."
"And that's you?" I said.
She said, "That's me. And no matter where we are, no matter what time of day it is, the world is dark and we are two blinking lights. Flashing at the same time. Neither one of us flashing alone.
”
”
Taylor Jenkins Reid (Daisy Jones & The Six)
“
To understand a child we have to watch him at play, study him in his different moods; we cannot project upon him our own prejudices, hopes and fears, or mould him to fit the pattern of our desires. If we are constantly judging the child according to our personal likes and dislikes, we are bound to create barriers and hindrances in our relationship with him and in his relationships with the world. Unfortunately, most of us desire to shape the child in a way that is gratifying to our own vanities and idiosyncrasies; we find varying degrees of comfort and satisfaction in exclusive ownership and domination.
”
”
J. Krishnamurti (Education and the Significance of Life)
“
Freedom is only to be found where there is burden to be shouldered. In creative achievements this burden always represents an imperative and a need that weighs heavily upon man’s mood, so that he comes to be in a mood of melancholy. All creative action resides in a mood of melancholy, whether we are clearly aware of the fact or not, whether we speak at length about it or not. All creative action resides in a mood of melancholy, but this is not to say that everyone in a melancholy mood is creative.
”
”
Martin Heidegger
“
Mood evidently affects the operation of System 1: when we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with our intuition.
These findings add to the growing evidence that good mood, intuition, creativity, gullibility, and increased reliance on System 1 form a cluster. At the other pole, sadness, vigilance, suspicion, an analytic approach, and increased effort also go together. A happy mood loosens the control of System 2 over performance: when in a good mood, people become more intuitive and more creative but also less vigilant and more prone to logical errors.
”
”
Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow)
“
Can You Imagine?
For example, what the trees do
not only in lightening storms
or the watery dark of a summer's night
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now - whenever
we're not looking. Surely you can't imagine
they don't dance, from the root up, wishing
to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting
a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly
more shade - surely you can't imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings
of the years slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit, surely you can't imagine
patience, and happiness, like that.
”
”
Mary Oliver
“
1) Work on one thing at a time until finished.
2) Start no more new books, add no more new material to "Black Spring."
3) Don't be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
4) Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
5) When you can't create you can work.
6) Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
7) Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
8) Don't be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
9) Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
10) Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
11) Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.
”
”
Henry Miller
“
Come here, let me share a bit of wisdom with you.
Have you given much thought to our mortal condition?
Probably not. Why would you? Well, listen.
All mortals owe a debt to death.
There's no one alive
who can say if he will be tomorrow.
Our fate moves invisibly! A mystery.
No one can teach it, no one can grasp it.
Accept this! Cheer up! Have a drink!
But don't forget Aphrodite--that's one sweet goddess.
You can let the rest go. Am I making sense?
I think so. How about a drink.
Put on a garland. I'm sure
the happy splash of wine will cure your mood.
We're all mortal you know. Think mortal.
Because my theory is, there's no such thing as life,
it's just catastrophe.
”
”
Anne Carson (Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides)
“
Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others... but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God "sending us" to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE hell unless it is nipped in the bud.
”
”
C.S. Lewis
“
The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts .... He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher—in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular, in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must be entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood, as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near to earth as a politician.
”
”
John Maynard Keynes
“
No more photos. Surely there are enough. No more shadows of myself thrown by light onto pieces of paper, onto squares of plastic. No more of my eyes, mouths, noses, moods, bad angles. No more yawns, teeth, wrinkles. I suffer from my own multiplicity. Two or three images would have been enough, or four, or five. That would have allowed for a firm idea: This is she. As it is, I'm watery, I ripple, from moment to moment I dissolve into my other selves. Turn the page: you, looking, are newly confused. You know me too well to know me. Or not too well: too much.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (The Tent)
“
It is my secrecy which makes you unhappy, my evasions, my silences. And so I have found a solution. Whenever you get desperate with my mysteries, my ambiguities, here is a set of Chinese puzzle boxes. You have always said that I was myself a Chinese puzzle box. When you are in the mood and I baffle your love of confidences, your love of openness, your love of sharing experiences, then open one of the boxes. And in it you will find a story, a story about me and my life. Do you like this idea? Do you think it will help us to live together?
”
”
Anaïs Nin (Collages)
“
With his current mood, Elizabeth realized, she was going to have to make her own opening. Lifting her eyes to his enigmatic golden ones, she said quietly, “Ian, have you ever wanted something very badly-something that
was within your grasp-and yet you were afraid to reach out for it?”
Surprised by her grave question and her use of his name, Ian tried to ignore the jealousy that had been eating at him all night. “No,” he said, scrupulously keeping the curtness from his voice as he gazed down at her alluring face. “Why do you ask? Is there something you want?”
Her gaze fell from his, and she nodded at his frilled white shirtfront.
“What is it you want?”
“You.
”
”
Judith McNaught (Almost Heaven (Sequels, #3))
“
We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this—through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication—we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime. One of the most difficult problems is to construct these barriers of such a height and strength that one has a true harbor, a sanctuary away from crippling turmoil and pain, but yet low enough, and permeable enough, to let in fresh seawater that will fend off the inevitable inclination toward brackishness.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
Who else is going?" I asked.
He shrugged. "Just you and me."
My mood promptly shot up past 'cheerful' and went straight to 'estatic.' Me and Dimitri. Alone. In a car. This might very well be worth a surprise test.
"How far is it?" Silently, I begged for it to be a really long drive. Like, one that would take a week. And would involve us staying overnight in luxury hotels. Maybe we'd get stranded in a snowbank, and only body heat would keep us alive.
"Five hours"
"Oh."
A bit less than I'd hoped for. Still, five hours was better than nothing. It didn't rule out the snowbank possibility, either.
”
”
Richelle Mead (Frostbite (Vampire Academy, #2))
“
Understand: people judge you by appearances, the image you project through your
actions, words, and style. If you do not take control of this process, then people will see
and define you the way they want to, often to your detriment. You might think that
being consistent with this image will make others respect and trust you, but in fact it is
the opposite—over time you seem predictable and weak. Consistency is an illusion
anyway—each passing day brings changes within you. You must not be afraid to
express these evolutions. The powerful learn early in life that they have the freedom to
mold their image, fitting the needs and moods of the moment. In this way, they keep
others off balance and maintain an air of mystery. You must follow this path and find
great pleasure in reinventing yourself, as if you were the author writing your own
drama
”
”
50 Cent (The 50th Law)
“
A voice within me is sobbing, "You see that's what's become of you. You're surrounded by negative opinions, dismayed looks and mocking faces, people who dislike you, and all because you don't listen to the advice of your own better half." Believe me, I'd like to listen, but it doesn't work, because if I'm quiet and serious, everyone thinks I'm putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I'm not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be sick, stuff me with aspirins and setatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can't keep it up anymore, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, an finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I'd like to be and what I could be if . . . if only there were no other people in the world.
Yours, Anne M. Frank.
”
”
Anne Frank
“
I love you’ means that I accept you for the person that you are, and that I do not wish to change you into someone else. It means that I will love you and stand by you even through the worst of times. It means loving you even when you’re in a bad mood, or too tired to do the things I want to do. It means loving you when you’re down, not just when you’re fun to be with. ‘I love you’ means that I know your deepest secrets and do not judge you for them, asking in return that you do not judge me for mine. It means that I care enough to fight for what we have and that I love you enough not to let go. It means thinking of you, dreaming of you, wanting and needing you constantly, and hoping you feel the same way for me
”
”
Deanne Laura Gilbert
“
I think falling in love should come with a warning label: CAUTION—side effects may include breaking up, accompanied by heartache, severe mood swings, withdrawal from people and life itself, wasted hours obsessing over bitter reflections, a need to destroy something (preferably something expensive that shatters), uncontrollable tear ducts, stress, a loss of appetite (Cheetos and Dr. Pepper exempt), a bleak and narrow outlook on the future, and an overall hatred of everyone and everything (especially all the happy couples you see strolling hand-in-hand, placed on your path only to exacerbate your isolation and misery). All above reactions will be intensified with the consumption of one or more alcoholic beverages.
”
”
Katie Kacvinsky (Second Chance (First Comes Love, #2))
“
Hitch: making rules about drinking can be the sign of an alcoholic,' as Martin Amis once teasingly said to me. (Adorno would have savored that, as well.) Of course, watching the clock for the start-time is probably a bad sign, but here are some simple pieces of advice for the young. Don't drink on an empty stomach: the main point of the refreshment is the enhancement of food. Don't drink if you have the blues: it's a junk cure. Drink when you are in a good mood. Cheap booze is a false economy. It's not true that you shouldn't drink alone: these can be the happiest glasses you ever drain. Hangovers are another bad sign, and you should not expect to be believed if you take refuge in saying you can't properly remember last night. (If you really don't remember, that's an even worse sign.) Avoid all narcotics: these make you more boring rather than less and are not designed—as are the grape and the grain—to enliven company. Be careful about up-grading too far to single malt Scotch: when you are voyaging in rough countries it won't be easily available. Never even think about driving a car if you have taken a drop. It's much worse to see a woman drunk than a man: I don't know quite why this is true but it just is. Don't ever be responsible for it.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
“
Then, slowly, my feet settled to the ground. Before I had taken six steps I sagged like a sail when the wind fades. As I walked back through the town, past sleeping houses and dark inns, my mood swung from elation to doubt in the space of three brief breaths.
I had ruined everything. All the things I had said, things that seemed so clever at the time, were in fact the worst things a fool could say. Even now she was inside, breathing a sigh of relief to finally be rid of me.
But she had smiled. Had laughed.
She hadn't remembered our first meeting on the road from Tarbean. I couldn't have made that much of an impression on her.
'Steal me,' she had said.
I should have been bolder and kissed her at the end. I should have been more cautious. I had talked too much. I had said too little.
”
”
Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1))
“
God whispered, "You endured a lot. For that I am truly sorry, but grateful. I needed you to struggle to help so many. Through that process you would grow into who you have now become. Didn't you know that I gave all my struggles to my favorite children? One only needs to look at the struggles given to your older brother Jesus to know how important you have been to me.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
Jesus was not revolutionary because he said we should love God and each other. Moses said that first. So did Buddha, Confucius, and countless other religious leaders we've never heard of. Madonna, Oprah, Dr. Phil, the Dali Lama, and probably a lot of Christian leaders will tell us that the point of religion is to get us to love each other. "God loves you" doesn't stir the world's opposition. However, start talking about God's absolute authority, holiness, ... Christ's substitutionary atonement, justification apart from works, the necessity of new birth, repentance, baptism, Communion, and the future judgment, and the mood in the room changes considerably.
”
”
Michael S. Horton (Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church)
“
The abuser’s mood changes are especially perplexing. He can be a different person from day to day, or even from hour to hour. At times he is aggressive and intimidating, his tone harsh, insults spewing from his mouth, ridicule dripping from him like oil from a drum. When he’s in this mode, nothing she says seems to have any impact on him, except to make him even angrier. Her side of the argument counts for nothing in his eyes, and everything is her fault. He twists her words around so that she always ends up on the defensive. As so many partners of my clients have said to me, “I just can’t seem to do anything right.”
At other moments, he sounds wounded and lost, hungering for love and for someone to take care of him. When this side of him emerges, he appears open and ready to heal. He seems to let down his guard, his hard exterior softens, and he may take on the quality of a hurt child, difficult and frustrating but lovable. Looking at him in this deflated state, his partner has trouble imagining that the abuser inside of him will ever be back. The beast that takes him over at other times looks completely unrelated to the tender person she now sees. Sooner or later, though, the shadow comes back over him, as if it had a life of its own. Weeks of peace may go by, but eventually she finds herself under assault once again. Then her head spins with the arduous effort of untangling the many threads of his character, until she begins to wonder whether she is the one whose head isn’t quite right.
”
”
Lundy Bancroft (Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men)
“
The library was a little old shabby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church. She pushed open the door and went in. She liked the combined smell of worn leather bindings, library past and freshly inked stamping pads better than she liked the smell of burning incense at high mass.
”
”
Betty Smith (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
“
It is too often the quality of happiness that you feel at every moment its fragility, while depression seems when you are in it to be a state that will never pass. Even if you accept that moods change, that whatever you feel today will be different tomorrow, you cannot relax into happiness like you can into sadness. For me, sadness has always been and still is a more powerful feeling; and if that is not a universal experience, perhaps it is the base from which depression grows. I hated being depressed, but it was also in depression that I learned my own acreage, the full extent of my soul. When I am happy, I feel slightly distracted by happiness, as though it fails to use some part of my mind and brain that wants the exercise. Depression is something to do. My grasp tightens and becomes acute in moments of loss: I can see the beauty of glass objects fully at the moment when they slip from my hand toward the floor
”
”
Andrew Solomon (The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression)
“
For example, highly sensitive people tend to be keen observers who look before they leap. They arrange their lives in ways that limit surprises. They're often sensitive to sights, sounds, smells, pain, coffee. They have difficulty when being observed (at work, say, or performing at a music recital) or judged for general worthiness (dating, job interviews). But there are new insights. The highly sensitive tend to be philosophical or spiritual in their orientation, rather than materialistic or hedonistic. They dislike small talk. They often describe themselves as creative or intuitive (just as Aron's husband had described her). They dream vividly, and can often recall their dreams the next day. They love music, nature, art, physical beauty. They feel exceptionally strong emotions -- sometimes acute bouts of joy, but also sorrow, melancholy, and fear. Highly sensitive people also process information about their environments -- both physical and emotional -- unusually deeply. They tend to notice subtleties that others miss -- another person's shift in mood, say, or a lightbulb burning a touch too brightly.
”
”
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
…. by the time they have reached the middle of their life’s journey, few people remember how they have managed to arrive at themselves, at their amusements, their point of view, their wife, character, occupation and successes, but they cannot help feeling that not much is likely to change anymore. It might even be asserted that they have been cheated, for one can nowhere discover any sufficient reason for everything’s coming about as it has. It might just have well as turned out differently. The events of people’s lives have, after all, only to the last degree originated in them, having generally depended on all sorts of circumstances such as the moods, the life or death of quite different people, and have, as it were, only at the given point of time come hurrying towards them
”
”
Robert Musil (The Man Without Qualities: Volume I)
“
In its severe forms, depression paralyzes all of the otherwise vital forces that make us human, leaving instead a bleak, despairing, desperate, and deadened state. . .Life is bloodless, pulseless, and yet present enough to allow a suffocating horror and pain. All bearings are lost; all things are dark and drained of feeling. The slippage into futility is first gradual, then utter. Thought, which is as pervasively affected by depression as mood, is morbid, confused, and stuporous. It is also vacillating, ruminative, indecisive, and self-castigating. The body is bone-weary; there is no will; nothing is that is not an effort, and nothing at all seems worth it. Sleep is fragmented, elusive, or all-consuming. Like an unstable, gas, an irritable exhaustion seeps into every crevice of thought and action.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison
“
You like to imagine yourself in control of your fate, consciously planning the course of your life as best you can. But you are largely unaware of how deeply your emotions dominate you. They make you veer toward ideas that soothe your ego. They make you look for evidence that confirms what you already want to believe. They make you see what you want to see, depending on your mood, and this disconnect from reality is the source of the bad decisions and negative patterns that haunt your life. Rationality is the ability to counteract these emotional effects, to think instead of react, to open your mind to what is really happening, as opposed to what you are feeling. It does not come naturally; it is a power we must cultivate, but in doing so we realize our greatest potential.
”
”
Robert Greene (The Laws of Human Nature)
“
I’ve always been a slow learner in some areas of my life.mostly the areas known as myself. Or maybe I should say ‘selves.’because the fact is, I’ve never, even as a child, felt I’m only one self, only one person. I’ve always felt I’m quite a few more than one. For example, there’s my jokey self, there’s my morose and fed-up self,there’s my lewd and disgusting self. There’s my clever-clogs self, and my fading-violet-who-cant-make-up-her-mind-about-anything self. There’s my untidy-clothes-everywhere-all-over-my-room self, and my manically tidy self when I want my room to be minimalist and Zen to the nth degree. There’s my confidant, arrogant self and my polite and reasonable and good listener self. There’s my self-righteous self and my wickedly bad self, my flaky self and my bsentimental self. There are selfs I like and selfs I don’t like.there’s my little-girl selfnwhonlikes to play silly games and there’s my old-woman self when I’m quite sure I’m eighty and edging towards geriatric.
The self I show in action at any moment depends on where I am, who I’m with, the circumstances of the situation and the mood I’m in.
”
”
Aidan Chambers (This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn)
“
I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without dry and killing seasons. Life is too complicated, too constantly changing, to be anything but what it is. And I am, by nature, too mercurial to be anything but deeply wary of the grave unnaturalness involved in any attempt to exert too much control over essentially uncontrollable forces. There will always be propelling, disturbing elements, and they will be there until, as Lowell put it, the watch is taken from the wrist.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
Depression is awful beyond words or sounds or images...it bleeds relationships through suspicion, lack of confidence and self-respect, the inability to enjoy life, to walk or talk or think normally, the exhaustion, the night terrors, the day terrors. There is nothing good to be said for it except that it gives you the experience of how it must be to be old, to be old and sick, to be dying; to be slow of mind; to be lacking in grace, polish and coordination; to be ugly; to have no belief in the possibilities of life, the pleasures of sex, the exquisiteness of music or the ability to make yourself and others laugh.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
It all comes back. Perhaps it is difficult to see the value in having one's self back in that kind of mood, but I do see it; I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be; one of them, a seventeen-year-old, presents little threat, although it would be of some interest to me to know again what it feels like to sit on a river levee drinking vodka-and-orange-juice and listening to Les Paul and Mary Ford and their echoes sing "How High the Moon" on the car radio. (You see I still have the scenes, but I no longer perceive myself among those present, no longer could ever improvise the dialogue.) The other one, a twenty-three-year-old, bothers me more. She was always a good deal of trouble, and I suspect she will reappear when I least want to see her, skirts too long, shy to the point of aggravation, always the injured party, full of recriminations and little hurts and stories I do not want to hear again, at once saddening me and angering me with her vulnerability and ignorance, an apparition all the more insistent for being so long banished.
It is a good idea, then, to keep in touch, and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about. And we are all on our own when it comes to keeping those lines open to ourselves: your notebook will never help me, nor mine you.
”
”
Joan Didion (Slouching Towards Bethlehem)
“
„You're Ned Stark's bastard, aren't you?“
Jon felt a coldness pass right through him. He pressed his lips together and said nothing.
„Did I offend you?“ Lannister said. „Sorry. Dwarfs don't have to be tactful. Generations of capering fools in motley have won me the right to dress badly and say any damn thing that comes into my head.“ He grinned. „You are the bastard, though.“
„Lord Eddard Stark is my father,“ Jon admitted stiffly.
Lannister studied his face. „Yes,“ he said. „I can see it. You have more of the north in you than your brothers.“
„Half brothers,“ Jon corrected. He was pleased by the dwarf's comment, but he tried not to let it show.
„Let me give you some counsel, bastard,“ Lannister said. „Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strenght. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.“
Jon was in no mood for anyone's counsel. „What do you know about being a bastard?“
„All dwarfs are bastards in their father's eyes.“
„You are your mother's trueborn son of Lannister.“
„Am I?“ the dwarf replied, sardonic. „Do tell my lord father. My mother died birthing me, and he's never been sure.“
„I don't even know who my mother was,“ Jon said.
„Some woman, no doubt. Most of them are.“ He favored Jon with a rueful grin. „Remember this, boy. All dwarfs may be bastards, yet not all bastards need be dwarfs.“ And with that he turned and sauntered back into the feast, whistling a tune. When he opened the door, the light from within threw his shadow clear across the yard, and for just a moment Tyrion Lannister stood tall as a king.
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1))
“
Just So You Know
You fall in love with every book you touch. You never break the spine or tear the pages. That would be cruel. You have secret favorites but, when asked, you say that you could never choose. But did you know that books fall in love with you, too?
They watch you from the shelf while you sleep. Are you dreaming of them, they wonder, in that wistful mood books are prone to at night when they’re bored and there’s nothing else to do but tease the cat.
Remember that pale yellow book you read when you were sixteen? It changed your world, that book. It changed your dreams. You carried it around until it was old and thin and sparkles no longer rose from the pages and filled the air when you opened it, like it did when it was new. You should know that it still thinks of you. It would like to get together sometime, maybe over coffee next month, so you can see how much you’ve both changed.
And the book about the donkey your father read to you every night when you were three, it’s still around – older, a little worse for wear. But it still remembers the way your laughter made its pages tremble with joy.
Then there was that book, just last week, in the bookstore. It caught your eye. You looked away quickly, but it was too late. You felt the rush. You picked it up and stroked your hand over its glassy cover. It knew you were The One. But, for whatever reason, you put it back and walked away. Maybe you were trying to be practical. Maybe you thought there wasn’t room enough, time enough, energy enough.
But you’re thinking about it now, aren’t you?
You fall in love so easily.
But just so you know, they do, too.
”
”
Sarah Addison Allen
“
Dear Collector: We hate you. Sex loses all its power and magic when it becomes explicit, mechanical, overdone, when it
becomes a mechanistic obsession. It becomes a bore. You have taught us more than anyone I know how wrong it is not to mix it with emotion, hunger, desire, lust, whims, caprices, personal ties, deeper relationships that change its color, flavor, rhythms, intensities.
"You do not know what you are missing by your micro-scopic examination of sexual activity to the exclusion of aspects which are the fuel that ignites it. Intellectual, imaginative, romantic, emotional. This is what gives sex its surprising textures, its subtle transformations, its aphrodisiac elements. You are shrinking your world of sensations. You are withering it, starving it, draining its blood.
If you nourished your sexual life with all the excitements and adventures which love injects into sensuality, you would be the most potent man in the world. The source of sexual power is curiosity, passion. You are watching its little flame die of asphyxiation. Sex does not thrive on monotony. Without feeling, inventions, moods, no surprises in bed. Sex must be mixed with
tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing, opium, wine. How much do you lose by this periscope at the tip of your sex, when you could enjoy a harem of distinct and never-repeated wonders? No two hairs alike, but you will not let us waste words on a description of hair; no two odors, but if we expand on this you cry Cut the poetry. No two skins with the same texture, and never the same light, temperature, shadows, never the same gesture; for a lover, when he is aroused by true love, can run the gamut of centuries of love lore. What a range,
what changes of age, what variations of maturity and innocence, perversity and art . . . We have sat around for hours and wondered how you look. If you have closed your senses upon silk, light, color, odor, character, temperament, you must be by now completely shriveled up. There are so many minor senses, all running like tributaries into the mainstream of sex, nourishing it. Only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy.
”
”
Anaïs Nin (Delta of Venus)
“
When I am high I couldn’t worry about money if I tried. So I don’t. The money will come from somewhere; I am entitled; God will provide. Credit cards are disastrous, personal checks worse. Unfortunately, for manics anyway, mania is a natural extension of the economy. What with credit cards and bank accounts there is little beyond reach. So I bought twelve snakebite kits, with a sense of urgency and importance. I bought precious stones, elegant and unnecessary furniture, three watches within an hour of one another (in the Rolex rather than Timex class: champagne tastes bubble to the surface, are the surface, in mania), and totally inappropriate sirenlike clothes. During one spree in London I spent several hundred pounds on books having titles or covers that somehow caught my fancy: books on the natural history of the mole, twenty sundry Penguin books because I thought it could be nice if the penguins could form a colony. Once I think I shoplifted a blouse because I could not wait a minute longer for the woman-with-molasses feet in front of me in line. Or maybe I just thought about shoplifting, I don’t remember, I was totally confused. I imagine I must have spent far more than thirty thousand dollars during my two major manic episodes, and God only knows how much more during my frequent milder manias.
But then back on lithium and rotating on the planet at the same pace as everyone else, you find your credit is decimated, your mortification complete: mania is not a luxury one can easily afford. It is devastating to have the illness and aggravating to have to pay for medications, blood tests, and psychotherapy. They, at least, are partially deductible. But money spent while manic doesn’t fit into the Internal Revenue Service concept of medical expense or business loss. So after mania, when most depressed, you’re given excellent reason to be even more so.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)