Everything was beautiful. Nothing hurt.

Our individuality is all, all, that we have. There are those who barter it for security, those who repress it for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along life’s bittersweet route. Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins

(Source: this-is-notforyou)

Salvation is for the feeble, that’s what I think. I don’t want salvation. I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb. If the gods would tax ecstasy, then I shall pay; however, I shall protest their taxes at each opportunity, and if Woden or Shiva or Buddha or that Christian fellow—what’s his name?—cannot respect that, then I’ll accept their wrath. At least I will have tasted the banquet that they have spread before me on this rich, round planet, rather than recoiling from it like a toothless bunny. I cannot believe that the most delicious things were placed here merely to test us, to tempt us, to make it more difficult for us to capture the grand prize: the safety of the void. To fashion of life such a petty game is unworthy of both gods and men. Jitterbug Perfume, Tom Robbins (via vulpesetuva)

I think people are often quite unaware of their inner selves, their other selves, their imaginative selves, the selves that aren’t on show in the world. It’s something you grow out of from childhood onwards, losing possession of yourself, really. I think literature is one of the best ways back into that. You are hypnotized as soon as you get into a book that particularly works for you, whether it’s fiction or a poem. You find that your defenses drop, and as soon as that happens, an imaginative reality can take over because you are no longer censoring your own perceptions, your own awareness of the world. Jeanette Winterson, Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 150 (via leopoldgursky)

(via teachingliteracy)