Awful but cheerful

“My grandfather used to tell me that if you stir muddy water it will only get darker. But if you let the muddy water stand still, the mud will settle and the water will become clearer.”

— I.G. Edmonds, Trickster Tales

“Perhaps tragedies are only tragedies in the presence of love, which confers meaning to loss.”

― Elizabeth Alexander

'I must also have a dark side if I am to be whole.'

― Jung

'I have suffered two grave accidents in my life, one in which a streetcar knocked me down.The other accident is Diego.'

— Frida Kahlo

'It is one of the difficulties of this book that I must always be appearing on a higher plane than that to which I properly belong - or, in case, per impossibile, I under-rate myself, at least I must always be omitting the evidence of my sinfulness. And it is a hateful situation. I do not want to appear other than I am - partly because of the untruth, partly because it is all such nonsense, this convention, this police convention, this drawing-room convention of reticence in matters which we know are vital to our judgment, and partly because of the unreality. But there is perhaps one comfort. It is this: we human beings are all in the same difficulty. We are all torn asunder, all of us, by this disintegration of our flesh and our spirit. And so if in this book I am appearing more spiritual than is credible to some of those I have loved, let them examine their own consciences. I think they will discover, as I have done, that they also are torn asunder and that they also have desired to be made whole.'

- Eric Gill, Autobiography

Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee

— Leonard Cohen, Anthem

'And we went on living it, like a wave, that doesn't know
it is at every moment different water.'

— Alan Williamson, 'A Childhood Around 1950'

'Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.'

— Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho

'I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.'

— Picasso

'Let it be the one
You know you know you need
Let the catch exceed
What you can afford'

— Imaginary Cities - Calm Before The Storm