Aphorisms
by Olivia Dresher
Selections from Darkness and Light: Private Writing as Art (an anthology of contemporary journals, diaries, and notebooks) and In Pieces: An Anthology of Fragmentary Writing
Truth reveals itself in consequences.
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Nothing lasts these days except what we throw away.
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They say: don’t take it personally if someone doesn’t love you. I say: should I also not take it personally if someone does?
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Life used to be cheap because it was short. Now it’s cheap because it’s long.
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A vacation is a cage of freedom.
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Despair is a sort of ecstasy, an ecstasy that feels bad.
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In person we’re only puppets of ourselves.
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I’ve tried to know hundreds of people. But I keep running into the same person, over and over again.
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Hope is like having one last fling.
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Identity is an illusion, a temporary state. Everyone is searching for it, but it’s only a brief reflection in a very shallow pool of time.
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Everything holds the possibility of falseness, except tragedy.
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I feel invisible but not invisible enough.
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Wonder and doubt are one, leaves from the same tree.
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Holidays are too soft (and too loud).
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The darkest night is a light, compared to eternity.
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Tenderness is humility.
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What’s free? Only thoughts, as long as we keep them to ourselves.
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Life says: death is none of your business.
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Ordinary life is like a bad novel: clichés everywhere, and no real character development.
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Patriotism is the opposite of free speech.
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What are whispers? The sound of words breathing.
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Aphorisms: drops of blood from my life.
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I secretly embrace everything, sideways.
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Blinded by the sun of my own longing to see.
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Thoughts are intangible heartbeats.
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Only the dead are old. The living are always young and naïve.
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Fog is rain that whispers.
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Who do I write to/for? No one I know. Only strangers, the unborn, and the dead.
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No way to say it except this way.
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The simple moods are a clear blue sky, and a secret is a bird that hauntingly flies by.
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Lack of intimacy with others is a death sentence.
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Only the wind remembers.
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Language is a wave that covers me and then recedes back into the sea, leaving just sand and broken shells at my feet. I walk in the sand, I pick up the broken shells. These.
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Love is a dance. Friendship is a walk.
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Life is a vacation from death.
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Why do people look at me when they look at me? And why do people not look at me when they look away?
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Link the leaps.
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Proof that I’ve never grown up: all the questions I ask.
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A lifetime is just one long Now.
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To be celibate with someone you’re in love with is almost like making love.
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What are my fragments? Parachutes that open as I fall through the night.