Increase And Widen Your Desires Till Nothing But Reality Can Fulfill Them. It Is Not Desired That Is

I shall live on dreams because reality is too cruel for me. I think I shall be the kind of person that nobody understands,

Anaïs Nin, Linotte: The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1914-1920

“Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow" - Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt & Emmylou Harris performing on The Dolly Parton Show (1976)

'You have everything but one thing: madness. A man needs a little madness or else - he never dares cut the rope and be free.'

+

“I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else. And all that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis, tr. by Carl Wildman, from “Zorba the Greek,” wr. c. 1946

We notice unusually beautiful things because they jolt us out of a state of unawareness. The secret is that we are surrounded by beauty everyday. We just have to make a conscious effort to notice and appreciate it.

Anaïs Nin, from the diary of Anais Nin, vol. VI: 1955-1966

Sarah Perry, The Essence of Peopling