““Anger and depression and sorrow are beautiful things in a story, but…they’re like a vice grip on creativity. If you’re in that grip you can hardly get out of bed, much less experience the flow of creativity and ideas. You must have clarity to create.””

—

David Lynch

D.L. Smith

“This dreadful hour that either shrinks into possibility or grows into mortality.

May the dawn never break, and may I and this whole room and the atmosphere to which I belong be distilled into Night, into absolute Darkness, and let nothing remain of me, not even a shadow that defiles with my memory whatever is left behind.”

—Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
• XIII: “Interval” | c. 1913

Mohammed el-Fayturi, tr. & ed. Adil Babikir, Modern Sudanese Poetry: An Anthology; “Yaaqut al-Arsh”

[Text ID: Mountains of grief in your eyes. / Don’t cry, dearest; We both have had enough; / the grand grief is too good for words.]

“Suffering is a terrible fire; it either purifies or destroys.”

— Oscar Wilde from a letter to Mrs Bernard Beere, circa 22 May 1897.

Fortesa Latifi, from The Truth About Grief.

“I didn’t come this far to only come this far.”

— Unknown