Live Like We're Dying

Our hearts are hungry for a food that won’t come

And we could make a feast from these crumbs

And we’re all staring down the barrel of a gun

So if your life flashed before you, what would you wish you would’ve done?

Well, if your plane fell out of the skies

Who would you call with your last goodbyes?

Should be so careful who we left out of our lives

And when we long for absolution, there’ll be no one on the line

Yeah… we gotta start lookin’ at the hands of the time we’ve been given here

If this is all we got then we gotta start thinking

If every second count on a clock that’s ticking

Gotta live like we’re dying

We only got 86 400 seconds in a day

To turn it all around or to throw it all away

We gotta tell ‘em that we love ‘em while we got the chance to say,

Gotta live like we’re dying

Cinema Paradiso: Love Theme

For The Sake Of Those In Need

It was Mary's painful need that made the infant Jesus

begin to speak from the cradle.

Whatever grew has grown for the sake of those in need,

so that a seeker might find the thing he sought.

If God Most High has created the heavens,

He has created them for the purpose of satisfying needs.

Wherever a pain is, that's where the cure goes.

wherever poverty is, that's where provision goes.

Wherever a difficult question is,

that's where the answer goes;

wherever a ship is, water goes to it.

Don't seek the water; increase your thirst,

so water may gush forth from above and below.

Until the tender-throated babe is born,

how should the milk for it

flow from the mother's breast?

... Mathnawi, Mevlana Rumi

The Scarlet Letter

"Who is to say what is a sin

in God's eyes?"

"How close they are,

love and hate.

We're no less bound by one

than the other"

... The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

"Nothing lingered here. Nothing more than the memories that I could have called back whenever I wanted to, if I was ever willing to endure the corresponding pain—the pain that had me now, had me cold. There was nothing special about this place without him. I wasn't exactly sure what I'd hoped to feel here, but the meadow was empty of atmosphere, empty of everything, just like everything else"

"As much as I struggled not to think of him, I did not struggle to forget. I worried—late in the night, when the exhaustion of sleep deprivation broke down my defenses—that it was all slipping away. That my mind was a sieve, and I would someday not be able to remember the precise color of his eyes, the feel of his cool skin, or the texture of his voice. I could not think of them, but I must remember them. Because there was just one thing that I had to believe to be able to live—I had to know that he existed. That was all. Everything else I could endure. So long as he existed"

"Before you, Bella, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars—points of light and reason... And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn't see the stars anymore. And there was no more reason for anything"

"After all the thousand times I’ve told you I love you, how could you let one word break your faith in me? I could see it in your eyes, that you honestly believed that I didn’t want you anymore"

Sophie's Choice

The film that made me love Meryl Streep for the first time, and after all these years, still remain one of the best movies ever.

I Could Not Stop For Death

Because I could not stop for Death,

He kindly stopped for me;

The carriage held but just ourselves

And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,

And I had put away

My labor, and my leisure too,

For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove

At recess, in the ring;

We passed the fields of gazing grain,

We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, he passed us;

The dews grew quivering and chill,

For only gossamer my gown,

My tippet only tulle.

We paused before a house that seemed

A swelling of the ground;

The roof was scarcely visible,

The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each

Feels shorter than the day

I first surmised the horses' heads

Were toward eternity.

... Emily Dickinson

There Is A Holiness To The Heart's Affections...

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness"

"I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination - what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth - whether it existed before or not - for I have the same idea of all our passions as of love: they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential beauty"

"For myself I know not how to express my devotion to so fair a form: I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair. I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days—three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain"

“I had such a dream last night. I was floating above the trees, with my lips connected to that of a beautiful figure”

"Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep?"

"Here Lies One Whose Name Was Writ In Water"

... John Keats (1795-1821)

I love Keats ...

I Am Vertical

But I would rather be horizontal.

I am not a tree with my root in the soil

Sucking up minerals and motherly love

So that each March I may gleam into leaf,

Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed

Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,

Unknowing I must soon unpetal.

Compared with me, a tree is immortal

And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,

And I want the one’s longevity and the other’s daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,

The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.

I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.

Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping

I must most perfectly resemble them—

Thoughts gone dim.

It is more natural to me, lying down.

Then the sky and I are in open conversation,

And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:

Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

... Sylvia Plath