12 Dark Fiction Books Similar to Ottessa Moshfegh Novels
15 Best Dark Books About Death, Life & the Absurdity of Existence
Best Western Novels: Fictional Books Set in the 1800s
True Crime Trading Cards Checklist
A List of the Best Charles Bukowski Quotes
The Fourth State of Matter
Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe
All The Light We Cannot See & The Best WW2 Fiction Books
The Best Anais Nin Quotes
You May Be A Designer If…
You may be a graphic designer if you purchase stock photos more often than you buy groceries, & can spot bad kerning from a mile away.
Mixtape 101 | Time for Taking it Slow
A digital mixtape ( AKA playlist) for spring featuring my latest favorite finds of the music world- everything ranging from folk rock to alternative to indie whatever. Check out the songs themselves and the playlist below, on YouTube and on Spotify. Seen it All –…
How To Be Sober
New to life on the wagon and curious on how to be sober? This article by Tessah Schoenrock, taken from Thought Catalog, lays it out for ya.
Best Netflix TV Show Series to Watch
Shows that don’t suck! My expert, top rated best netflix tv show series on Netflix Instant streaming, including lesser known shows.
The Fourth State of Matter
The short story by Jo Ann Beard titled The Fourth State of Matter, taken from her book, The Boys of My Youth.
Rowing by Anne Sexton
Complete poem of Rowing by Anne Sexton. A story, a story!
(Let it go. Let it come.)
Best Netflix Movies to Watch
Presenting another set of the best Netflix movies to watch in the Spring of 2014 on Netflix Instant Streaming.
What Web Designers Do
Ever wonder what web designers do? It’s hard to portray the duties of my job without going into what I call “nerd-talk,” but I’m trying anyway.
Eight Rules For Writing Fiction
Kurt Vonnegut’s list of 8 tips for writing fiction, from his book, “How to Write with Style.”
Susan B Anthony
“[…] think your best thoughts, speak your best words, work your best works, looking to your own conscience for approval.” – Susan B Anthony
Dating A Designer: 10 Things To Know
10 things you should know if you’re thinking about dating a designer. Fun with infographs!
Best Netflix Romantic Movies
Looking for something to watch this Valentines Day? Check out my picks for the best Netflix romantic movies available to stream online.
Best Friends Are Hard to Find
They’re some of the most treasured people in your life after your family. Best friends are hard to find.
On Dating A Writer
Eureka! My love of writing is permissible. Presenting an entire list of reasons why dating a writer is pretty awesome from time to time.
Sh*t Apple Fanatics Say
Shit Apple Fanatics say. Hilarious video! Seriously, check it out. You may be an apple fanatic if…
Bob Dylan Super bowl Ad
Thank God: Bob Dylan Super Bowl ad saved me from the boredom of the terrible game.
Why Don’t You Dance? by Raymond Carver
“Why don’t you dance?”
“I don’t think so,” the boy said.
“Go ahead,” the man said. “It’s my yard. You can dance if you want to.”
Fake Websites from Law & Order
Web design humor. It’s something I think of as a bit hard to come by. This is a video of the stupidest fake websites from Law & Order.
WTF | Volvo Owners
I saw this awhile back but thought it were worth posting. Seriously, WTF Volvo Owners?
Best Netflix Crime Shows | Netflix Instant
My expert, top rated best netflix crime shows and series on Netflix Instant streaming. Shows that don’t suck!
About
My name is Jessie & this is my blog. I live just outside of Kansas City. I rant about all kinds of things, like design, books, art, poetry, music, true crime & much more.
My name is Jessie & this is my blog.
I live just outside of Kansas City.
I rant about all kinds of things, like design, books, art, poetry, music, true crime & much more.
"You aren’t in love with me, are you? Why should I be in love with you?”
“No, my dear, I’m not in love with you, no more than you are with me, and if I were, you would be the last person I’d ever tell. God help the man who ever really loves you. You’d break his heart, my darling, cruel, destructive little cat who is so careless and confident she doesn’t even trouble to sheathe her claws.”
But the world is a nicer place when you think everyone is telling the truth. There are no agendas, no hidden motives; no one lies for dramatic effect.
— Claire Fuller, Bitter Orange
I lie to myself all the time, but I never believe me.
— S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
— Albert Camus
To go someplace to work every day and to return. It was impossible. To do things, simple things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Mother's Day… was a man born just to endure those things and then die?
— Charles Bukowski
If I had one wish, it would be to dance with him to this song..
But I haven't met him yet.
— Unknown
There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Well, none of us, as far as I can see, are doing what we intended to do right now, but I think we’ll make out just the same. It’s a poor person and a poor nation that sits down and cries because life isn’t precisely what they expected it to be.
And here in my isolation I can grow stronger. Poetry seems to come of itself, without effort, and I need only let myself dream a little while painting to suggest in it.
— Paul Gauguin
For a moment, her heart stood still and then a queer fear, stronger than anxiety, stronger than grief, began to beat in her breast. It can’t be true, she thought vehemently, trying to push back the fear. Doctors make mistakes. I won’t think it’s true. I can’t let myself think it’s true. I’ll scream if I do. I must think of something else.
Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.
— Claude Debussy
It’s a good reminder that I’m still an addict, actually, because a normal person probably wouldn’t look at this poor woman covered in sores and think, Wow, that looks amazing. But I see past her sores to the memory of a feeling now lost to me. I see surrender.
— Melissa Broder, Death Valley
The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?
— Edgar Allan Poe
the impossibility of being human
all too human
this breathing
in and out
out and in
these punks
these cowards
these champions
these mad dogs of glory
moving this little bit of light toward us
impossibly.
— Charles Bukowski
Babies, babies, babies. Why did God make so many babies? But no, God didn’t make them. Stupid people made them.
This grief is too much to bear.
If there was a tight order to the world that you made, it’s come unspooled and no one will wind it up again.
God, I feel it coming, that ache for the stories that will never be told. And an anger rising when i remember what never should have been.
— Kate Bowler, The Lives We Actually Have
Now something so sad has hold of us that the breath leaves and we can't even cry.
— Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
What a violent thing love is, he thought. Violent was the word that had come to him.
If you were wise enough to know that this life would consist mostly of letting go of things you wanted, then why not get good at the letting go, rather than the trying to have?
— Miranda July, The First Bad Man
She had become accustomed to being lonely. She was used to walking alone and to being considered 'different.' She did not suffer too much.
— Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.
— Winston Churchill
A man never is happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is only to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the end, and comes into harbor with masts and rigging gone. And then, it is all one whether he has been happy or miserable; for his life was never anything more than a present moment always vanishing; and now it is over.
— Arthur Schopenhauer
Beware irony, ignore criticism, look to what is simple, study the small and humble things of the world, do what is difficult precisely because it is difficult, do not search for answers but rather love the questions, do not run away from sadness or depression for these might be the very conditions necessary to your work. Seek solitude, above all seek solitude.
How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep, that have taken hold.
— J.R.R. Tolkein
'There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty-unless she is wed to something more meaningful-is always superficial.'
— Donna Tartt, The Secret History
Tell them need is an excuse for love. Tell them need prevails.
— Anne Sexton
Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.
— George Eliot
I was only thirty-one, but already I missed my twenties, the decade of not knowing any better.
He thought of himself as a single current in a deep river. He was separate and he was whole, all at the same time. It was a wonderful feeling.
— Michael Blake, Dances With Wolves
Did you ever look back at some moment in your past and have it suddenly grow so vivid that all the intervening years seemed brief, dreamlike, impersonal—the motions of a May afternoon surrendered to routine?
— Roger Zelazny, Doorways in the Sand
In myself, too many things have perished which, I imagined, would last forever.
— Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love.
— Charles Bukowski
All had suffered crushing misfortunes and had not been crushed. They had not been broken by the crash of empires, the machetes of revolting slaves, war, rebellion, proscription, confiscation. Malign fate had broken their necks, perhaps, but never their hearts. They had not whined, they had fought. And when they died, they died spent but unquenched. All of those shadowy folks whose blood flowed in her veins seemed to move quietly in the moonlit room.
This life’s hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.
— George V. Higgins, The Friends of Eddie Coyle
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
— Alan Watts
I like good company, but I like hard work still better.
— Camille Saint-Saëns
For it is a deep and human truth that most souls upon the earth are not at ease unless they find themselves safe in the hands of a force far greater than themselves.
— Lauren Groff, Matrix
Death was the glass; death was between us; coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened.
— Virginia Woolf, A Haunted House
Aging is a constant loss; all the things considered essential in youth prove with time that they are not. Skins are shed, and left at the roadside for the new young to pick up and carry on.
— Lauren Groff, Matrix
To act as if nothing matters is to recognize that life is not a problem to be solved but rather an experience to be lived.
An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.
— Charles Bukowski
That life - whatever else it is - is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch.
I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my inquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, downthrow and upheaval, and my effort is their self expression.
— Dylan Thomas
In the morning it was morning and I was still alive.
— Charles Bukowski, Post Office
I want for what I love to go on living
and as for you I loved you and sang you above everything,
for that, go on flowering, flowery one,
so that you reach all that my love orders for you,
so that my shadow passes through your hair,
so that they know by this the reason for my song.
— Pablo Neruda, When I Die I Want Your Hands On My Eyes
His father is a person of integrity, that’s why he went crazy.
— Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh
She could not mourn. She could no longer weep grasping the essence of annihilation, she wished only to cease, to be no more, as if sunk in some profound sleep devoid of wakening.
There are too many ideas and too many people. And too many directions to go. I was starting to believe that the reason it matters to care passionately about something, is that is whittles the world down to a more manageable size.