It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be. One can give nothing whatever without giving oneself ― that is to say, risking oneself. If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving.

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met nearly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson

The man is broken. It’s a strange turn of phrase, now that I come to think about it. It’s one of those quirks of English, the kind of quiet inexplicable oddity you might not pick up on unless it was the second - or in my case, the third - language you learned.

When we say,

“He was attacked,” or, “he was spoken to,” we understand that we’re speaking in the past tense of an attack or a conversation that only happened once. People don’t stay attacked.

But when we say, “he was broken,” we might be speaking of the past, the singular act of being broken, and but also a present condition, and an inevitable future; a state of brokenness that is everywhere, and deeply felt, and unshakeable.

I am in Eskew, Jon Ware

There is no idea so grand that it may not be murdered one day in the slumber of its own complacence. There is no tool which may not be repurposed, no meaning which will not turn to nonsense - given time. Time is the cruellest and the kindest deity, for it mocks those who seek to triumph from it; for it suffers no power, humours no tyrant; it topples every great justice, dismembers reason, rots progress, forgets the stories we laid down at its feet.

The Silt Verses, Jon Ware

There is a theory that watching unbearable stories about other people lost in grief and rage is good for you – may cleanse you of your darkness. Do you want to go down to the pits of yourself all alone? Not much. What if an actor could do it for you? Isn’t that why they are called actors? They act for you. You sacrifice them to action. And this sacrifice is a mode of deepest intimacy of you with your own life.

Anne Carson, Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides; Tragedy: A Curious Art Form.

But even to get to the state of suicide, I must await my return to consciousness, I must have a free hand in all the articulations of my being. God has placed me in despair as if in a constellation of deadends whose radiance culminates in me. I can neither live nor die, nor can I not desire to die or live. And all mankind resembles me.

Antonin Artaud