My father always said, “early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”

It was lights out at 8 p.m. in our house and we were up at dawn to the smell of coffee, frying bacon and scrambled eggs.

My father followed this general routine for a lifetime and died young, broke, and, I think, not too wise.

Taking note, I rejected his advice and it became, for me, late to bed and late to rise.

Now, I’m not saying that I’ve conquered the world but I’ve avoided numberless early traffic jams, bypassed some common pitfalls and have met some strange, wonderful people.

One of whom was myself - someone my father never knew.

Throwing Away the Alarm Clock

– Charles Bukowski

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“Settle. Because otherwise you’re just gonna get older and harder, and more alone. And you’re gonna do everything you can to fill that hole, with friends, and your career, and meaningless sex, but the hole doesn’t get filled. One day, you’re gonna look around and you’re going to realize that everybody loves you, but nobody likes you. And that is the loneliest feeling in the world.”

– BoJack Horseman

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Dear Milena,

I wish the world were ending tomorrow. Then I could take the next train, arrive at your doorstep in Vienna, and say:

"Come with me, Milena.
We are going to love each other
without scruples or fear or restraint.
Because the world is ending tomorrow."

Perhaps we don't love unreasonably because we think we have time, or have to reckon with time.

But what if we don't have time? Or what if time, as we know it, is irrelevant?
Ah, if only the world were ending tomorrow.
We could help each other very much.

– Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena.

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"Sing like no one’s listening, love like you’ve never been hurt, dance like nobody’s watching, and live like it’s heaven on earth."

– Mark Twain

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We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster that we go bankrupt by the age of 30 and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to make yourself feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste!

– Call Me by Your Name

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Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer.
And these the last verses that I write for her.

– Pablo Neruda

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