"I Exist As I Am, That Is Enough,

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

Jean-Paul Sartre

'I love humanity,' he said, 'but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.'

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin

hey sorry your boyfriend said that russian classics are about that life is bleak. yeah he meant dostoyevsky and tolstoy. no, he didn't look beyond any of the lowest lows of the stories. he didn't even see the overarching themes of beauty and hope and connection. frankly we have all been laughing about him and we're gonna beat him up now. sorry

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating.”

— Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

Fernando Pessoa, from The Book of Disquiet

Text ID: Everything in me tends to go on to become something else. My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while…