Barrister Babu CC #18 - Page 78

you once told me that the human eye is god's loneliest creation. how so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing. the eye, alone in its socket, doesn't even know there's another one, just like it, an inch away, just as hungry, as empty.

— Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

"I'd cut my soul into a million different pieces just to form a constellation to light your way home. I'd write love poems to the parts of yourself you can't stand. I'd stand in the shadows of your heart and tell you I'm not afraid of your dark."

-Andrea Gibson

“there is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness” — Edgar Allan Poe.

“ Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be? ”

— Charles Bukowski (The Post Office)

It takes courage

To see the world, in all its tainted glory

And still to love it

xiii: the iliad, book 20

“They say you are Peleus’ son, that fine, flawless man; your mother, Thetis, sleek-haired child of the Sea. And I am Aeneas, and I can boast Anchises’ blood, the proud Anchises, but my mother is Aphrodite. Our parents-- one pair or the other will mourn a dear son today.”

But you gods are willing to give aid to murderous Achilles,
who has neither righteous mind, nor pliant purpose within his chest:
The things he knows are savage, just like a lion
who, having yielded to great violence and his warlike heart
appears among the flocks of mortal men looking for a feast.
So too Achilles has utterly lost pity, nor is there any reverence in him,
which brings both harm and help to men.
Perhaps someone else will lose another even more dear to him,
his own brother, born from the same womb, or his son:
but surely, having wailed and mourned, he lets go.
For the Moirai have granted to mortals a heart steadfast in suffering.
But he, after he has robbed godlike Hector of his own dear heart,
hanging him from his horses he drags him around the burial-mound
of his own companion: and for him, nothing nobler or better will come of it.
Let him beware - although he is brave, we may grow bitter toward him,
for he disfigures the mute earth in his rage.

(Apollo, Iliad 24.39-54)

Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing, sooner than war.

Homer, The Iliad

“This was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles.”

~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Peace, you never seemed so tedious
As now – no, never quite like this.

~ Sappho