Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.
The universe is a philosophical abyss.
We are two abysses - a well staring at the sky.
Marisa! Marisa!” The cry was torn from Lord Asriel, and with the snow leopard beside her, with a roaring in her ears, Lyra’s mother stood and found her footing and leapt with all her heart, to hurl herself against the angel and her daemon and her dying lover, and seize those beating wings, and bear them all down together into the abyss.
. . . see well how it often befalls that to rise to the topmost degree would make it seem that the abyss is on high.
And I, infinitesimal being, drunk with the great starry void, likeness, image of mystery, I felt myself a pure part of the abyss, I wheeled with the stars, my heart broke loose on the wind.
Fear not. For fear itself is fed by fear, and all fears pass. Did no one tell you so? Come take my hand, my friend, and we will peer into this fear's abyss. And jump! And know.
Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering its a feather bed.
I admire the Elsie Tanners and Barbara Windsors of the world: people who have crawled back from the abyss. I'm quite camp in that respect.
She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph. I don't know what she was, anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink, no looking down, or looking back. I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.
We live in such constant nearness to the abyss of past time that the moment is endlessly sucked into.
She felt the abyss of disenchantment.
Go back to the abyss! Fall into nothingness that awaits you and your master!
KILL ME!" And then Newt's eyes cleared, as if he'd gained one last trembling gasp of sanity, and his voice softened. "Please, Tommy. Please. " With his heart falling into a black abyss, Thomas pulled the trigger.
I wonder if you encountered this dictum first spoken by a twentieth-century statesman: "An abyss cannot be crossed in two steps.
We build our character as a carapace to keep away the fear of the abyss. That's what our character is for.
This is what I love about novels - both reading them and writing them. They jump into the abyss to be with you where you are.
What is love? There is nothing in the world, neither man nor Devil nor any thing, that I hold as suspect as love, for it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing exists that so fills and binds the heart as love does. Therefore, unless you have those weapons that subdue it, the soul plunges through love into an immense abyss.
Before me is the abyss. How can I leap across it? And if I do not leap, how shall I ever be able to reach God?
A photograph offers us a glimpse into the abyss of time.