“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life... You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' or 'how very perceptive' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.”
-The Sandman, Neil Gaiman
I don't hate love, but the majority of that quote is definitely something I can relate to.
“I only have two kinds of dreams: the bad and the terrible.
Bad dreams I can cope with. They're just nightmares, and they end eventually. I wake up.
The terrible dreams are the good dreams. In my terrible dreams, everything's fine. I'm still with the company. I still look like me. None of the last five years ever happened. Sometimes I'm married. Once I even had kids. I even knew their names. Everything's wonderful and normal and fine.
And then I wake up. And I'm still me. And I'm still here. And that is truly terrible.”
-The Sandman - Dream Country, Neil Gaiman
“There is a theory which states that if ever for any reason anyone discovers what exactly the Universe is for and why it is here it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another that states that this has already happened.”
-Douglas Adams
“I'm spending a year dead for tax reasons.”
Douglas Adams
...I actually collect them. Lately I've been trying to keep them in this little book I got but I'm way too disorganized. Anyhoo, in honor of the new icon I made, here are some of my favorite Henry Rollins quotes:
"“Somewhere someone is thinking of you. Someone is calling you an angel. This person is using celestial colors to paint your image. Someone is making you into a vision so beautiful that it can only live in the mind. Someone is thinking of the way your breath escapes your lips when you are touched. How your eyes close and your jaw tightens with concentration as you give pleasure a home. These thoughts are saving a life somewhere right now. In some airless apartment on a dark, urine stained, whore lined street, someone is calling out to you silently and you are answering without even being there. So crystalline. So pure. Such life saving power when you smile. You will never know how you have cauterized my wounds. So sad that we will never touch. How it hurts me to know that I will never be able to give you everything I have."”
“It is no surprise to me that hardly anyone tells the truth about how they feel. The smart ones keep themselves to themselves for good reason. Why would you want to tell anyone anything that's dear to you? Even when you like them and want nothing more than to be closer than close to them? It's so painful to be next to someone you feel strongly about and know you can't say the things you want to.”
“Half of life is fucking up the other half is dealing with it.”
“When was the last time you wanted to say it all to the right person? To have it all come out right, to surprise yourself at how together you could be. When was the last time you ever met someone who made you want to give it all to them? I mean give yourself to them. Where you couldn't express yourself enough - like you wanted to cut off one of your arms to be understood. That's it - you would cut your head off to have someone understand you. You know how pointless that one is. You know how many times you've smashed yourself to bits on the rocks.”
I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine.”
“Why do you think the old stories tell of men who set out on great journeys to impress the gods? Because trying to impress people just isn't worth the time and effort.”
“There are so many hammocks to catch you if you fall, so many laws to keep you from experience. All these cities I have been in the last few weeks make me fully understand the cozy, stifling state in which most people pass through life. I don't want to pass through life like a smooth plane ride. All you do is get to breathe and copulate and finally die. I don't want to go with the smooth skin and the calm brow. I hope I end up a blithering idiot cursing the sun - hallucinating, screaming, giving obscene and inane lectures on street corners and public parks. People will walk by and say, "Look at that drooling idiot. What a basket case." I will turn and say to them "It is you who are the basket case. For every moment you hated your job, cursed your wife and sold yourself to a dream that you didn't even conceive. For the times your soul screamed yes and you said no. For all of that. For your self-torture, I see the glowing eyes of the sun! The air talks to me! I am at all times!" And maybe, the passers by will drop a coin into my cup
-Henry Rollins
Title: Rubicon
Artist: VNV Nation
Album: Empires
Praying for myself.
These thoughts I try to hide.
I have faith in me and hope this will survive.
But it's tearing me apart.
I can't hear the words by which I guide.
So I must ask again who will carry me.
I will not deny that nothing can defend
from the helplessness that's cutting deep inside,
and I cannot prevent the thought that nothing's real.
Seems I've waited years for this day to end.
The strength I need to feel, the pride inside of me,
Are not there behind the face staring back at me.
The anger and the pain of knowing where I am.
I have come so far and I cannot return.
Nothing I can do that I have not done.
No words I can say. No truth left that I can see.
So must I let this end so everything falls apart.
Before I live the life as I have always done.
Tell me what to do so I do nothing wrong.
Something I can hope for. Something real that I can see.
So nothing falls apart. So that it does not end.
I cannot return. I can't start again.
