Mud Vein Quotes

What’s the difference?” I asked him. “Between the love of your life, and your soulmate?” “One is a choice, and one is not.

The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake. Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true? We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La. They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth.

Tell me a truth, Senna." "I don't know how." "Then tell me a lie." "I don't love you." "The truth is for the mind," he says. "Lies are for the heart. So let's just keep lying.

We are all going to die, but I’m going to die first. In the very last second of my life, I will think of you. Senna

Senna: “Why are you here?” Isaac: “Because you are.

Humans weren’t made to carry someone else’s weight. We can barely lift our own.” “Maybe lifting someone else’s weight makes yours a little more bearable

He kissed me with color, with drumbeat, and a surgeon’s precision. He kissed me with who he was, the sum of his life—and it was all encompassing. I wondered what I kissed him with since I was only broken parts.

Isaac: “It hurts me when you cry.” Senna: “I’m crying, but I don’t feel anything,” Isaac: “Yes, I know. That’s what hurts me the most.

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.

It’s your darkness that pulls me in. Your mud vein. But sometimes having a mud vein will kill you.

You’ve been silent your whole life. You were silent when we met, silent when you suffered. Silent when life kept hitting you. I was like that too, a little. But not like you. You are a stillness. And I tried to move you. It didn’t work. But that doesn’t mean you didn’t move me. I heard everything you didn’t say. I heard it so loudly that I couldn’t shut it off. Your silence, Senna, I hear it so loudly.

We are lovers, fear and I. She calls to me, and I let her in.

You breathed life back into me. It was instinct for me to be there with you. I didn’t want to save you, I just didn’t know how to leave you.

That's why writers write—to say things loudly with ink. To give feet to thoughts; to make quiet, still feelings loudly heard.

I was sitting in a white room hating myself, until you breathed life back into me. You loved me so much that I started to love myself.

I heard everything you didn’t say. I heard it so loudly that I couldn’t shut it off. Your silence, Senna, I hear it so loudly.

But there is something about the process of convincing yourself that you don’t care that just confirms even more that you do.

I like pain. I like when it lingers. It reminds a person of what they've lived through.

Nick was wrong about me. Having a mud vein didn’t kill me; it saved me. My vein drew Isaac. He was the light and he followed me into the darkness. He became the darkness, then he carried my burdens so I wouldn’t have to.

People lie. They use you and they lie, all the while feeding you bullshit about being loyal and never leaving you. No one can make that promise, because life is all about seasons, and seasons change.

Every time you want to remember what love feels like, you look for me.

There is a string that connects us that is not visible to the eye. Maybe every person has more than one soul they are connected to, and all over the world there are those invisible strings… Maybe the chances that you’ll find each and every one of your soul mates is slim. But sometimes you’re lucky enough to stumble across one. And you feel a tug. And it’s not so much a choice to love them though their flaws and through your differences, but rather you love them without even trying. You love their flaws.

Life is too short to hide your wrongs. So I hide myself instead.

His lips move against my hair. “I’m sorry, Senna.” I tremble. He’s sorry? Him? “For what?” There is a million year pause. “I couldn’t save you this time.” I cry into his chest. Not because he couldn’t. Because he wanted to.

Love doesn’t leave. It bears all things.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end.

Bad things happen because we live in a world with evil.

Love is a Godgiven tool, she tells me. It screws things back in place that were loose, and it cleans out all the broken pieces that you don't need anymore.

It’s never that I don’t want to be with you. It’s that you don’t want to be with me.” -Isaac

You'll feel me in the fall backwards. She'd kissed me on the mouth and walked out.

The truth is for the mind,” he says. “Lies are for the heart. So let’s just keep lying.” I kiss the man I lie to. He kisses me with truth. I am set free

When I was a child my mother would tell me that people lost soul in two ways: someone could take it from you, or you’d surrender it willingly.

Nick loved me enough to leave me alone. Isaac knew me better than I knew me. I said I wanted to be left alone, he knew better. I said I wanted white, he knew better. He brightened me. He enlightened me. Because Isaac was my soulmate. Not Nick. Nick was just some great love. Isaac knew how to heal my soul.

Acceptance. Embrace the suck.

Being stuck on love was a real bitch to cure. Like cancer, I think. Just when you think you’re over it, it comes back.

Isaac is touch, and he is sound. He is smell and he is sight. I tried to make him a single sense like I did with everyone else, but he is all of them. He overpowers my senses and that is exactly why I ran from him. I was afraid of feeling brightly—afraid I would become used to the color and sounds and smells, and they would be taken from me. I was a self-fulfilling prophecy; destroying before I could be destroyed. I wrote about women like that, I didn’t realize I was one.

Because simplicity speaks the loudest.

Love is a possession; it’s something that you own from the layers of people in your life. But if my life were a cake it would be un-layered, unbaked, missing ingredients. I isolated myself too soundly to own anyone’s love.

You believe in a person’s permanence because humans have a tendency to stick to you when life is good. I call them honey summers. I’ve had enough honey summers in life to know that people leave you when winter comes.

Love sticks, and it stays and it braves the bullshit.

You want your freedom until you get it, then you feel bare without your chains. I wonder if we ever get out of here, will we feel the loss?

You are a lot uglier than you think, plenty more selfish than you are ever likely to admit. So, you ignore what’s inside of you. Thinking if you don’t acknowledge it, it’s not really there. Until someone unlikely comes along and cracks you. They see every dark corner, and they get it. And they tell you it’s okay to have dark corners, instead of making you feel ashamed of them.

We are all going to die, but I'm going to die first. In the very last second of my life, I will think of you.

Humans weren’t made to carry someone else’s weight. We can barely lift our own.

You need simplicity to create complexity

We all do don’t we? We are consumed with our own mortality. Some people eat right and exercise to preserve their lives, others drink and do drugs daring fate to take theirs, and then there are the floaters—the ones who try to ignore their mortality altogether because they’re afraid of it.” “Which are you?” He set down his knife and looked at me. “I’ve been all three. And now I’m undecided.

Forgiveness is for Buddhists.

I discovered that private things were mostly sour. They sat spoiling in the corners of your heart for so long that by the time you acknowledged them you were dealing with something rancid.

It’s the worst form of torture a person can imagine—the wait to die.

How many times have you been in love, Doctor?" "Twice. The love of my life, and now my soulmate." "What's the difference? Between the love of your life, and your soulmate?" "One is a choice, and one is not...There is a string that connects us that is not visible to the eye. Maybe every person has more than one soul they are connected to, and all over the world there are these invisible strings. Maybe the chances that you'll find each and every one of your soulmates is slim. But sometimes you're lucky enough to stumble across one. And you feel a tug. And it's not so much a choice to love them through their flaws and through your differences, but rather you love them without even trying. You love their flaws.

You have to believe someone sometime, Senna. When they tell you that. Otherwise you’ll never know what it feels like to be loved. And that’s a sad thing.

Fear, light footed, dances around me. She whispers seductively in my ear. We are lovers, fear and I. She calls to me, and I let her in.

Hay demasiado mal, demasiada maldad en el mundo para alguna vez estar a salvo.

If there was a God,” I said, “I’d say with confidence that he hates me. Because my life is the sum of bad things. The more people you let in, the more bad you let in.

Love doesn’t leave. It bears all things

Why are you here?” “Because you are.

I wasn't good at saying. I was good at writing.

I found my piece. She wasn't what I was expecting. If you formed a woman's soul out of black graphite, bathed it in blood, and then rolled it around in the softest petals, you still wouldn't have touched on the complication that was my match.

Who is safe? No one. There is too much bad, too much evil in the world to ever be safe.

—Los humanos no fueron hechos para cargar con el peso de otros. Apenas podemos con el propio

It’s slow poison; you make them believe it’s real, and it keeps them coming back for more.

Tell me a truth, Senna." "I don't know how," I breath. "Then tell me a lie." "I don't love you," I say. I sink beneath the weight of it all. Isaac stirs behind me, and then he is leaning over me, his elbows on either side of my head. "The truth is for the mind," he says. "Lies are for the heart. So let's just keep lying.

Ya que los seres humanos pueden elegir ser ya sea crueles o buenos, no son, de hecho, ninguna de esas cosas en esencia.

That’s what it’s like to be a prisoner of anything. You want your freedom until you get it, then you feel bare without your chains.

Love comes slow, but God does it go fast. He was beautiful—then he was ugly. I esteemed him, then I esteemed him not.

People lie. They use you and they lie, all the while feeding you bullshit about being loyal and never leaving you.

I’ve had enough honey summers in life to know that people leave you when winter comes.

I’m sorry, Senna.” I tremble. He’s sorry? Him? “For what?” There is a million year pause. “I couldn’t save you this time.” I cry into his chest. Not because he couldn’t. Because he wanted to

Maybe the chances that you’ll find each and every one of your soulmates is slim. But sometimes you’re lucky enough to stumble across one. And you feel a tug. And it’s not so much a choice to love them through their flaws and through your differences, but rather you love them without even trying. You love their flaws.

El amor resiste, y se queda y desafía toda la mierda y las mentiras.

La vida que eliges vivir es la esencia de quien eres

I don’t feel anything. Not even fear. Can you tell me what to feel, Isaac?” His throat spasmed, then he licked his lips. “It’s emotional Morphine,” he said finally. “Just go with it.” And that was it. That’s all we said for that night.

I feel emotion rush me - the intimacy, the awkwardness. I want to revolt against it, but I don't. It takes an awful toll on a person to fight down everything they're feeling.

Love is a possession; it’s something that you own from the layers of people in your life. c

Engagement pictures made me want to vomit—especially when they were taken on railroad tracks. I always pictured Thomas the Train rolling over them, his smiley blue face beaded with their blood.

Sometimes I hate him. When he does the dishes, he shakes off each one before setting it in the drying rack. Water flies everywhere. A couple of drops always hit me in the face. I have to leave the room to avoid smashing a plate against his head.

Eso es lo que se siente el ser prisionero de lo que sea. Quieres tu libertad hasta que la consigues, entonces te sientes desnuda sin tus cadenas.

I didn’t eat pork either. Except bacon, of course. Everyone eats bacon.

Isaac was a stranger and he had seen more of my wounds than anyone else. Not because I chose him like I did Nick. He was just always there. That's what scared me. It was one thing inviting someone into your life, choosing to put your head on the train tracks and wait for imminent death, but this - this I had no control over.

Si alguien te amaba tanto como se amaban a sí mismos, ¿por qué engañaban, rompían promesas y mentían? ¿No estaba en nuestra naturaleza resguardarnos? ¿No deberíamos resguardar nuestra alma gemela con mucho más fervor?

Estar atascado en el amor es una puta enfermedad que curar. Como el cáncer, pienso. Cuando crees que lo has superado, vuelve.

What you wrap around your soul determines your outcome.

I once read that there is an invisible thread that connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but will never break. [...] Please don’t let it break, I silently plead to him. I need to know that some cords can’t be cut.

No one wants to carry someone when they’re heavy from life. I read a book about that once. A bunch of drivel about two people who kept coming back to each other. The lead male says that to the girl he keeps letting get away. I had to put the book down. No one wants to carry someone when they’re heavy from life. It’s a concept smart authors feed to their readers. It’s slow poison; you make them believe it’s real, and it keeps them coming back for more. Love is cocaine.

—La verdad es para la mente —dice—. Las mentiras son para el corazón. Así que vamos a seguir mintiendo.

Si Dios decidiera no permitir que nada malo le sucediera a la gente, tendría que quitarles su libre albedrío. Se convertiría en el dictador y ellos serían sus marionetas

it's emotional Morphine," he said finally. "Just go with it.

—Los humanos no fueron hechos para cargar con el peso de otros. Apenas podemos con el propio. —Incluso mientras lo digo, no lo creo del todo. He visto a Isaac hacer cosas que la mayoría no harían. Pero es sólo Isaac. —Quizás el llevar la carga de alguien vuelve a la tuya más tolerable —dice.

Cada vez que quieras recordar cómo se siente el amor, búscame. Esa línea abarcaba cada mujer que ha ofrecido su pequeño corazón latiente a un hombre. Porque todos tenemos a alguien que nos recuerda como quema el amor. Ese irrenunciable amor que se resbala de nuestros dedos como arena.

That’s what it’s like to be a prisoner of anything. You want your freedom until you get it, then you feel bare without your chains. I wonder if we ever get out of here, will we feel the loss? It sounds like a joke, but I know how the human mind works.

There is a string that connects us that is not visible to the eye. Maybe every person has more than one soul they are connected to, and all over the world there are these invisible strings. Maybe the chances that you'll find each and every one of your soulmates is slim. But sometimes you're lucky enough to stumble across one. And you feel a tug. And it's not so much a choice to love them through their flaws and through your differences, but rather you love them without even trying. You love their flaws.

When i was a little boy i had a red bike, every night when I went to bed I begged God to give my bike wings so that in the morning, I could fly away. Every morning I'd crawl out of bed and run straight to the garage to see if he answered my prayers. I still have the bike. It's mire rusted than red now. But I still check. Everyday.

As far as I was concerned children had bipolar disorder. They were angry, unpredictable, emotional ambulance-sirens with pigtails, grubby hands and food crusted mouths that twisted from smiles to frowns and back again as quick as a breath.

This was not me. I was spilling my guts, as some people called it; divulging. It was word vomit and Saphira Elgin had her fingers down my throat. I discovered that private things were mostly sour. They sat spoiling in the corners of your hear for so long that by the time you acknowledged them you were dealing with something rancid. And that's what I did; I threw every rotting thing at her, and she absorbed each one.

—Todos lo hacemos ¿no? Nos consume nuestra propia mortalidad. Algunas personas comen bien y hacen ejercicio para preservar sus vidas, otros beben y se drogan retando al destino a tomar la de ellos, y luego están los flotadores, los que tratan de ignorar su mortalidad porque tienen miedo de ella. —¿Cuál eres tú? Dejó el cuchillo y me miró. —He estado en los tres. Y ahora estoy indeciso.

His entire aspect was menacing, starting with his chilling eyes and the pronounced bone structure of his face. He was tall and lean, but the skin on his arms was stretched over muscles that looked as taut as whipcord. The backs of his hands were bumpy with strong veins. His clothes and hair had snagged natural debris—twigs, sprigs of moss, small leaves. He seemed indifferent to all that, just as he did to the mud caked on his boots and the legs of his jeans. He smelled of the swamp, of sweat, of danger.

He thought he stood upon an English hillside. Rain was falling; it twisted in the air like grey ghosts. Rain fell upon him and he grew thin as rain. Rain washed away thought, washed away memory, all the good and the bad. He no longer knew his name. Everything was washed away like mud from a stone. Rain filled him up with thoughts and memories of its own. Silver lines of water covered the hillside, like intricate lace, like the veins of an arm. Forgetting that he was, or ever had been, a man, he became the lines of water. He fell into the earth with the rain. He thought he lay beneath the earth, beneath England. Long ages passed; cold and rain seeped through him; stones shifted within him. In the Silence and the Dark he grew vast. He became the earth; he became England. A star looked down on him and spoke to him. A stone asked him a question and he answered it in its own language. A river curled at his side; hills budded beneath his fingers. He opened his mouth and breathed out spring. He thought he was pressed into a thicket in a dark wood in winter. The trees went on for Over dark pillars separated by thin, white slices of winter light. He looked down. Young saplings pierced him through and through; they grew up through his body, through his feet and hands. His eye-lids would no longer close because twigs had grown up through them.

What’s the difference?” I asked him. “Between the love of your life, and your soulmate?” “One is a choice, and one is not.” I’d never thought of love as a choice. Rather, it seemed like the un-choice. But if you stayed with someone who was self-destructing and chose to keep loving, I suppose it could be a choice. I waited for him to go on. To explain how I fit in. “There is a string that connects us that is not visible to the eye,” he said. “Maybe every person has more than one soul they are connected to, and all over the world there are these invisible strings.” As if to make his point, his finger traced a black ribbon that ran through my horse’s mane. “Maybe the chances that you’ll find each and every one of your soulmates is slim. But sometimes you’re lucky enough to stumble across one. And you feel a tug. And it’s not so much a choice to love them through their flaws and through your differences, but rather you love them without even trying. You love their flaws.

La gente miente. Ellos te utilizan y mienten, a la vez mientras te alimentan con mierda sobre ser leal y nunca dejarte. Nadie puede hacer esa promesa, porque la vida tiene que ver con las estaciones, y las estaciones cambian. No me gusta el cambio. No se puede confiar en ello, sólo puedes confiar en el hecho de que va a suceder. Pero antes de que suceda, y antes de que aprendas, se siente bien acerca de sus estúpidas promesas de mierda. Eliges creer, porque es necesario. Vas a través de un verano cálido, donde todo es hermoso y no hay nubes, sólo calor, calor, calor. Crees en la permanencia de una persona, porque los seres humanos tienen una tendencia a pegarse a ti cuando la vida es buena. Yo los llamo los veranos de miel. He tenido bastantes veranos de miel en la vida para saber que las personas se van cuando llega el invierno. Cuando la vida te congela y estás temblando y te pones capas de protección lo más que puedas para sobrevivir. Ni siquiera lo notas al principio. El frío te pone demasiado aturdido para ver con claridad. Entonces, de repente, miras y la nieve está empezando a derretirse, y te das cuenta que pasaste el invierno sola. Eso me molesta mucho. Tanto como para dejar a la gente antes de que me dejen a mí. Eso es lo que hice con Nick. Eso es lo que traté de hacer con Isaac. Excepto que no se iría. Él se quedó todo el invierno.

Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children cry, -- determined to make a day of it. Why should we knock under and go with the stream? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we run? We will consider what kind of music they are like. Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through church and state, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d'appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business. Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore-paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining rod and thin rising vapors I judge; and here I will begin to mine.