#nothingness

Tell me something, Mari—do you believe in reincarnation?” Mari shakes her head. “No, I don’t think so,” she says. “So you don’t think there’s a life to come?” “I haven’t thought much about it. But it seems to me there’s no reason to believe in a life after this one.” “So once you’re dead there’s just nothing?” “Basically.” “Well, I think there has to be something like reincarnation. Or maybe I should say I’m scared to think there isn’t. I can’t understand nothingness. I can’t understand it and I can’t imagine it.” “Nothingness means there’s absolutely nothing, so maybe there’s no need to understand it or imagine it.” “Yeah, but what if nothingness is not like that? What if it’s the kind of thing that demands that you understand it or imagine it? I mean, you don’t know what it’s like to die, Mari. Maybe a person really has to die to understand what it’s like.” “Well, yeah…,” says Mari. “I get so scared when I start thinking about this stuff,” Korogi says. “I can hardly breathe, and my whole body wants to shrink into a corner. It’s so much easier to just believe in reincarnation. You might be reborn as something awful, but at least you can imagine what you’d look like—a horse, say, or a snail. And even if it was something bad, you might be luckier next time. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#nothingness #reincarnation #imagination

And in the livid night there creeps a basilisk, spawned by the moon after its strange fashion. The moon – eternally barren - is its father, but its mother is the sand, barren likewise: this is the mystery of the desert. Many say that it is an animal, but this is not so, it is a thought, growing there where there is no earth and no seed: a thought which sprang from that which is eternally barren, and now assumes strange forms which life does not know. This is the reason that no one can describe this being, because it is like nothingness, indescribable. ↗

— Hanns Heinz Ewers

#monster #nothingness #life

There is nothing for you in this bleak hospital room but a cold and empty nothingness that has no answers, can give no peace, will provide no comfort to the living. ↗

— Rebecca James

#death #depression #empty #nothingness #sad

I know there's no heaven. I know it all turns to nothingness. But I fear there will be some remnant of me left within that void. Left conscious by some random fluke. Something that will scream out for this. That one speck of my soul will still exist and be left trapped and wanting. For you. For the light. For anything. ↗

— Drew Magary

#dying #nothingness #death

Absolute equals nothingness. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#dejan-stojanovic #equals #literature #literature-quotes #nothingness

Nothing will unfold for us unless we move toward what looks to us like nothing: faith is a cascade. ↗

— Alice Fulton

#cascade #faith #god #inspiration #nothingness

God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through. ↗

— Paul Valery

#everything #god #made #nothing #nothingness

We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness. ↗