#numb

What are those people doing?" Jenna whispered to me. "I don't know," I replied through a frozen grin, "but I'm afraid a musical number might be involved. ↗

— Rachel Hawkins

#jenna #musical-number #rachel-hawkins #sophie #music

...I think the more she has failed at things like relationships and parenting, the more she has cut herself off from feeling bad about those things. And if you don't let yourself feel bad, sooner or later you stop feeling good, too. You insulate yourself. Build up layers, like stacking paper, everything growing heavier. And when the weight becomes too much, those layers compress. Become hard. Sad, really, to think that Kristina has turned herself into cardboard. ↗

— Ellen Hopkins

#numbness #relationship

We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away. ↗

— Alan Moore

#perception

The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread. When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out "stop!" When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer. ↗

— Bertolt Brecht

#numbness #war #crime

Promise me you'll never go away. Promise me you'll always stay. ↗

— Tegan Quin

#my-number #never-go-away #promise-me #sara-quin #tegan-and-sara

I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here. ↗

— Sylvia Plath

#poem

Do you know what the mathematical expression is for longing? ... The negative numbers. The formalization of the feeling that you are missing something. ↗

— Peter Høeg

#longing #mathematics #missing #negative-numbers #mathematics

Soon after I began working for the Professor, I realized that he talked about numbers whenever he was unsure of what to say or do. Numbers were also his way of reaching out to the world. They were safe, a source of comfort. ↗

— Yōko Ogawa

#numbers #society #mathematics

You'll get used to it. In the end you won't even notice it anymore," he said. "How is that possible? It will always be there, right before my eyes." "Exactly," said Mattia. "Which is precisely why you won't see it anymore. ↗

— Paolo Giordano

#the-solitute-of-prime-numbers #solitude

For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time. ↗

— Louis L'Amour

#fiction #history #inexhaustible #limit #lived