things i don't want to know, by deborah levy

(x)

"That spring when life was hard and I was at war with my lot and simply couldn't see where there was to get to, I seemed to cry most on escalators at train stations."

"When happiness is happening it feels as if nothing else happened before it, it is a sensation that happens only in the present tense."

"A female writer cannot afford to feel her life too clearly. If she does, she will write in a rage when she should write calmly." (x)

She writes of herself and the mothers she knew at the school gate as "shadows of our former selves, chased by the women we used to be before we had children. We didn't really know what to do with her, this fierce, independent young woman who followed us about…" (x)

matthias kiss

(x)

"Which is all to say, smoking definitely didn’t love me back. And admittedly, I had liked the contradiction of it, of being a person who worked out six days a week and wouldn’t use beauty products that contained parabens but also willingly ingested—nay, paid for the privilege of ingesting—poison with my matcha in the morning. Like they canceled each other out, like that meant that, despite the solid, wonderful boyfriend, the great job, the friends and the family, and, God help me, even the golden retriever, that signifier of settled-down squareness and all the associated responsibilities therein, that I was still young and stupid and fun, still capable of sussing out the best route to the bar at a packed party, of staying out all night. Cigarettes, to me, were a blazing signifier that I still made bad choices, that I was still interesting."

- Love Stories: My Chemical Romance, by Alessandra Codinha (x)

"Es dauerte mindestens zwei Jahre, bis ich mich hier zu Hause fühlte. Jetzt habe ich allerdings manchmal das Gefühl, dass sich Berlin schon wieder an mir vorbeientwickelt hat. Die Bar 25, das Stattbad Wedding, der Picknick-Club: so viele Orte, mit denen ich Schönes verbinde, gibt es nicht mehr. Das muss eine Stadt erst einmal schaffen – dass du keine 30 bist und schon Nostalgiker."

- Berlin, Berlin, wir ziehen nach Berlin! (x)

blue vs. red

"With typical Li logic, she says she feels that she has become younger as she has grown older. “For about 28 years [her age now], I thought I was 45. And now I’ve started to go backwards. For the first time I’m aware that I’m actually quite young, but it’s almost too late as I’m not even that young anymore. So I feel a bit stressed out that I kind of missed my youth. Now I just want to do everything – I want to live life and make art and make love.”"

- Lykke Li (x)

"I’m 27 now. A lot of people talk about how getting older makes them sadder and that this age is often something intense. (...) It’s a time when you can’t really blame everything on youth anymore."

- Lykke Li (x)

"A city becoming, a woman becoming. The pathetic fallacy runs strong in Berlin, as my Irish friend Louise would say; anyone can borrow this city and its wounds as set design. "

- Berlin, An Anti-Romance (x)

"Best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?
Don’t complain. There’s a great chapter in Ben Horowitz’s book called The Hard Thing About Hard Things called “Nobody Cares” and he talks about how he was running Netscape and one of his investors looks at him one day and tells him, “Ben, nobody cares—just do your job.” You can make a million excuses for why something didn’t go well, but ultimately, just fix it and get on with it. Be a solutions person."

- Emily Weiss (x)

"I usually wash my face right when I wake up because I need to let everything soak in which makes this a lengthy process. I get up much earlier than I need to and will sit in my robe and marinate while drinking coffee before I actually make any noticeable progress that an outsider can see."

- Dana Schwartz, Into the Gloss (x)

Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are (x)

"...denen draußen der Regen aufs Styling nieselt, die niemand sofort erkannt hat und die sich nun "einen Augenblick gedulden" müssen. Die Tragik der Generation Gästeliste bei drei Grad über null."

- (x)