magpie nest
photo diary, Museum, mixtapes
“ You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
— Albert Camus
“Photography is like life… What does it all mean? I don’t know - but you get an impression, a feeling…. An impression of walking through the street, walking through the park, walking through life. I’m very suspicious of people who say they know what it means.” — Leonard Freed
Bruce Davidson: “I am a photographer in the way you might be a plumber. I like it that way”(gallery)
“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” E. B. White, 1976
“ I used to think that I could never lose anyone if I photographed them enough. In fact, my pictures show me how much I’ve lost.
— Nan Goldin

(Source: herzschrittmacher, via lanaadams)
“ Jacobs has the word ‘perfect’ tattooed on his right wrist. ‘Because I am a perfect being in a perfect world where everything that happens must be completely…’ He lets that thought go. ‘It was from something that I was studying at this rehab that I went to.’ Jacobs has been to rehab twice, once in 1999 and again in February 2007, for alcohol and cocaine abuse. ‘It felt so right to me when I read it: that I have a choice. We all have a choice in how to look at things, and when things don’t go the way I like I tend to think they’re a problem. Well, you can look at something as a problem or look at it as a learning experience or an opportunity for growth or whatever. This idea that everything happens for a reason and is perfect and you will benefit from it even if you can’t see the benefit - it’s just a nicer ideal to subscribe to than, “Oh, God, I’ve got all these problems and life is full of obstacles.”’ Rubbing his finger over the word on his wrist, he says, ‘I put it there to remind me, for when I’m looking at myself and wishing that I could be stronger in this way or better at that thing, and I can just go, “No. I’m exactly how I need to be.” So, perfect.’
— *
“ What a fine weather today! Can’t choose whether to drink tea or to hang myself.
— A. P. Chekhov

(Source: moroshka, via laurelelf)
“ I usually solve problems by letting them devour me.
— Franz Kafka

(Source: kafkaesque-world, via pink-slip)
» F. Scott Fitzgerald's list of things to worry about.

“Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it?”

(Source: sayluna, via thowra)

“ I draw flowers every day on my iPhone,” he told me then, “and send them to my friends, so they get fresh flowers every morning. And my flowers last. Not only can I draw them as if in a little sketchbook, I can also then send them to 15 or 20 people who then get them that morning when they wake up.
— David Hockney
“ The tremendous world I have inside my head. But how free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times rather be torn to pieces than retain it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me.
— Franz Kafta, from his diaries
“ Life is a nightmare that prevents one from sleeping.
— Oscar Wilde 

(via beserk)
Letter to Lady Georgiana Morpeth, by Sydney Smith, 1820

Dear Lady Georgiana,

- Nobody has suffered more from low spirits than I have done – so I feel for you.

1st. Live as well as you dare.

2nd. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75° or 80°.

3rd. Amusing books.

4th. Short view of human life – not further than dinner or tea.

5th. Be as busy as you can.

6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you.

7th. And of those acquaintances who amuse you.

8th. Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely – they are always worse for dignified concealment.

9th Attend to the effects tea and coffee have upon you.

10th. Compare your lot with that of other people.

11th Don’t expect too much from human life – a sorry business at the best.

12th. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy, sentimental people, and everything likely to excite feeling or emotion, not ending in active benevolence.

13th. Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree.

14th. Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue.

15th. Make the room where you commonly sit gay and pleasant.

16th. Struggle by little and little against idleness.

17th. Don’t be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice.

18th. Keep good blazing fires.

19th. Be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion.

20th. Believe me, dear Lady Georgiana,

Very truly yours,

Sydney Smith

 “Goofy, my darling, hasn’t it been a lovely day? I woke up this morning and the sun was lying like a birthday parcel on my table so I opened it up and so many happy things went fluttering into the air; love to Doo-do and the remembered feel of our skins cool against each other in other mornings” -  (Zelda to Scott, 1930)  “You phoned me tonight - I walked on those telephone wires for two hours after holding your love like a parasol to balance me.”  (Zelda to Scott, 1930)  “Why should graves make people feel in vain? Somehow I can’t find anything hopeless in having lived - All the broken columns and clasped hands and doves and angels mean romances - and in an hundred years I think I shall like having young people speculate on whether my eyes were brown or blue … I hope my grave has an air of many, many years ago about it - Isn’t it funny how, out of a row of Confederate soliders, two or three will make you think of dead lovers and dead loves”  (Zelda to Scott, 1919)  - Zelda Fitzgerald & F. Scott Fitzgerald’s love letters
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