nobodycangiveyoufreedom:

We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.

― Hermann Hesse

Untitled.

p0optarts:

I think every one of us 
Is born an artist

A leather moleskine
A blank canvas

And as we journey
We paint, we draw, we write

All the while searching
For a scholar of sorts

To inspect each stroke 
And to study each inflection

My book is tattered
Paper crumpled from tears

Thumbed through carelessly
By hands less graceful than yours

With the second page as yet untouched
I already know this:

None can read me
Quite like you can.

(via inkstainsandheartbeats)

"There is no escape. You can’t be a vagabond and an artist and still be a solid citizen, a wholesome, upstanding man. You want to get drunk, so you have to accept the hangover. You say yes to the sunlight and pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. Everything is within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the apprehension of death. Say yes to everything, shirk nothing. Don’t try to lie to yourself. You are not a solid citizen. You are not a Greek. You are not harmonious, or the master of yourself. You are a bird in the storm. Let it storm! Let it drive you! How much have you lied! A thousand times, even in your poems and books, you have played the harmonious man, the wise man, the happy, the enlightened man. In the same way, men attacking in war have played heroes, while their bowels twitched. My God, what a poor ape, what a fencer in the mirror man is- particularly the artist- particularly myself!"

another reminder.

the world is heavy
but your bones
(just a cubic inch)
can hold 19,000 lbs

ounce for ounce
they are stronger than steel

atom for atom
you are more precious than diamond

and stars have died
so that you may live

you need to remember these things
when you say that you are weak
and worthless

(Source: sinandserotonin, via indiecampavan)