I don’t feel in the least bit sorry for myself. I am still not a victim, because I could have left that restaurant with my dignity intact and my purse empty. I could have given that man sitting opposite me a lesson in morality or tried to make him see that before him sat a princess who should be wooed not bought. I could have responded in all kinds of ways, but —like most people—I let fate choose which route I should take.

When we meet someone and fall in love, we have a sense that the whole universe is on our side. I saw this happen today as the sun went down. And yet if something goes wrong, there is nothing left! No herons, no distant music, not even the taste of his lips. How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly? Life moves very fast. It rushes us from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds.

she associated love more with the person’s absence than with their presence

For I am the first and the last
I am the venerated and the despised
I am the prostitute and the saint
I am the wife and the virgin
I am the mother and the daughter
I am the arms of my mother
I am barren and my children are many I am the married woman
and the spinster
I am the woman who gives birth
and she who never procreated
I am the consolation for the pain of birth
I am the wife and the husband
And it was my man who created me
I am the mother of my father
I am the sister of my husband
And he is my rejected son
Always respect me
For I am the shameful and the magnificent one
-Hymn to Isis, third or fourth century B.C., discovered in Nag Hammadi-

He was not dead yet, not exactly— parts of him were dead already, certainly other parts were still only waiting for something to happen, something grand, but it isn't always about me, he keeps saying, though he's talking about the only heart he knows— He could build a city. Has a certain capacity. There's a niche in his chest where a heart would fit perfectly and he thinks if he could just maneuver one into place— well then, game over.

“Bless me,” he said. I blessed him, not really knowing what I was doing. I asked him to do the same, and he did, saying, “blessed be this woman, who has loved much.” They were beautiful words, and we embraced again and stayed there, unable to understand how eleven minutes could carry a man and a woman so far.
Neither of us was tired. We went into the living room, he put on a record and did exactly as I had hoped: he lit the fire and poured me some wine. Then he opened a
book and read:

Words lost on the wind. But I needed to hear them, and he needed to say them. I fell asleep, although I don’t know when. I dreamed, not of a situation or of a person, but of a perfume that flooded the air.

tragedies and their timing

hi, i've missed you

even though i'm no better than a beast, don't i have the right to live?

farewell, oh dae-su.

what can you do, against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing then simply persists in his lunacy?

'I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get.'

my emotions are epileptic btw.

Windmill or no windmill, he said, life would go on
as it had always gone on — that is, badly.