"What I didn’t yet understand was the importance of taste and timing. Books are like people. Some look deceptively attractive from a distance, some deceptively unappealing; some are easy company, some demand hard work that isn’t guaranteed to pay off. Some become friends and say friends for life. Some change in our absence — or perhaps it is we who change in theirs — and we meet up again only to find that we don’t get along any more."

- Mark Haddon, The Right Words in the Right Order (via distantheartbeats)

(via bookmania)

"

I look around and see easy marks like myself. All of our focus is on the shells, hoping that this time we can overcome the machination; this time we’ll get our money back. I recognize the empty look in their eyes: these are rational, enlightened men and women like myself, who have fallen for the con. Yes, I am an easy mark. I have fallen for much darker shell games than the one I stumbled upon in Germany. To my shame, I have chased after the apparitions of my ego secretly hoping that my pursuit will lend meaning and purpose to my life. I have lost much more than money in my pursuits. But when I have clarity I see the scam of it all. My temporal, finite pursuits never offered me ultimate resolution nor eternal fulfillment. How could this chase of mine possibly have had a happy ending?

I confess: I’ve been chasing after ghosts. Playing games that cannot be won, games that aren’t games at all. If I had it to do over again, I hope that I would see through the deception. I hope that I would spare my money from the shell game and invest in reality instead, spending my life on that which has true purpose, rather than a black hole. Maybe I would pay for my brother’s cup of coffee and ask him about his family. Maybe I would give it to the homeless girl across the street. Next time around, I hope I would avoid the deception and put my time, energy, and money back into the reality around me instead. Investing in real needs, real life. Real pain. Real hope. The rest is just a shell game, ghost machines: vampires that suck our lives away. I’ve played the shell games. I found out the hard way that there is nothing to win. It’s not a game at all. Listen to your brother. Just laugh and walk away.

"

- Jon Foreman

"Perhaps I’ve become an easy mark for a much larger con: a shell game that robs my life away from me, one moment at a time. “If only I had that job, that house, that girlfriend, that car.” I hunt down my fantasies ignoring the reality around me. The people around me who truly care for me, the true needs of those who depend on me; I cast these realities aside for the phantoms that lie just out of reach. Ignoring that which is in my pursuit for that which is not. Chasing ghosts. It’s a shell game, a sleight of hand."

- Jon Foreman

tastefullyoffensive:

[collegehumor/via]

Never stop exploring… 

“There will be an answer, let it be…”

Through the dark, through the sad, she will pull me through. 

tastefullyoffensive:

[via]

(via loboooo)

The jones @ Gainesville, fl

Satchel’s!