"All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt."

 "Our contemporary Western society, in spite of its material, intellectual and political progress, is increasingly less conducive to mental health, and tends to undermine the inner security, happiness, reason and the capacity for love in the individual; it tends to turn him into an automaton who pays for his human failure with increasing mental sickness, and with despair hidden under a frantic drive for work and so-called pleasure.’ Our ‘increasing mental sickness’ may find expression in neurotic symptoms. These symptoms are conspicuous and extremely distressing. But ‘let us beware’, says Dr Fromm, ‘of defining mental hygiene as the prevention of symptoms. Symptoms as such are not our enemy, but our friend; where there are symptoms there is conflict, and conflict always indicates that the forces of life which strive for integration and happiness are still fighting.’ The really hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. ‘Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does.’ They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness."

 - Estaria na verdade lutando contra a sua própria vontade intensa de aproximar-se do impossível de um outro ser humano?

 

- Amor será dar de presente um ao outro a própria solidão? Pois é a coisa mais última que se pode dar de si, disse Ulisses.

 

- Em primeiro lugar devemos seguir a Natureza, não esquecendo os momentos baixos, pois que a Natureza é cíclica, é ritmo, é como um coração pulsando. Existir é tão completamente fora do comum que se a consciência de existir demorasse mais de alguns segundos, nós enlouqueceríamos. A solução para esse absurdo que se chama “eu existo”, a solução é amar um outro ser que, este nós compreendemos que exista.

 “Passei toda a noite, sem dormir, vendo, sem espaço, a figura dela,

E vendo-a sempre de maneiras diferentes do que a encontro a ela.

Faço pensamentos com a recordação do que ela é quando me fala,

E em cada pensamento ela varia de acordo com a sua semelhança.

Amar é pensar.

E eu quase que me esqueço de sentir só de pensar nela.

Não sei bem o que quero, mesmo dela, e eu não penso senão nela.

Tenho uma grande distracção animada.

Quando desejo encontrá-la

Quase que prefiro não a encontrar,

Para não ter que a deixar depois.

Não sei bem o que quero, nem quero saber o que quero. Quero só

Pensar nela.

Não peço nada a ninguém, nem a ela, senão pensar.”

"When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. That's what I think. It's just a form of sincerity."

"These bodies come to an end; but that vast embodied Self is ageless, fathomless, eternal."

 "Death in my mind isn’t a finality. There’s a continuum: It’s like at night, you go to sleep and in the daytime you wake up, or whenever you wake up, and it’s a new day."

 "What was once before you - an exciting, mysterious future - is now behind you. Lived; understood; disappointing. You realize you are not special. You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone's experience. Every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone's everyone."

 "And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. Even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope for something good to come along. Something to make you feel connected, to make you feel whole, to make you feel loved."

 "The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread.

When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out "stop!"

When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer."

"I'll admit I'm full of shit

(...)
I can't explain why it's a sin the state I'm living in
I just feel so tired
I go outside
I go outside
(...)

Please don't even call
I can't hear you at all."

 "He said 'Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.'"

"I gotta be above it

And I know that I gotta be above it now
And I know that I can't let them bring me down
And I gotta bide my time as a face in the crowd

(...)

This time I'm just gonna take it
Or I'm never gonna shake it
I'll just close my eyes and make it so that
All those little things don't affect me, now

Know that I gotta be above it now
And I can't let them all just bring me down"

 "se alguém numa curva me convidar

eu vou lá
que andar é reconhecer
olhar

eu preciso andar
um caminho só
vou buscar alguém
que eu nem sei quem sou"

 “Every day we reconstruct ourselves out of the salvage of our yesterdays.”

"To exist is to survive unfair choices.”

"I've always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect."

"I was ashamed of myself when I realised life was a costume party and I attended with my real face."

"Lá no fundo está a morte, mas não tenha medo. Segure o relógio com uma mão, pegue com dois dedos o pino da corda, puxe-o suavemente. Agora se abre outro prazo, as árvores soltam suas folhas, os barcos correm regata, o tempo como um leque vai se enchendo de si mesmo e dele brotam o ar as brisas da terra, a sombra de uma mulher, o perfume do pão. Que mais quer, que mais quer? Amarre-o depressa a seu pulso, deixe-o bater em liberdade, imite-o anelante. O medo enferruja as âncoras, cada coisa que pôde ser alcançada e foi esquecida começa a corroer as veias do relógio, gangrenando o frio sangue de seus pequenos rubis. E lá no fundo está a morte se não corremos, e chegamos antes e compreendemos que já não tem importância."

 “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”

 "You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself”

 “I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me, too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.”

"People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”