@DeductionIsKey
“It was fine, the boy says, they all say, and they blur together, young and scared and angry at the world, beaten down and defiant still and--
It was fine, children lie to themselves but it's wrong because it was not fine, that's never fine and all of them know it.”
— “everything (and nothing at all)” c. 1998
“Her husband is away most of the year; she chops her own wood and shares her baked bean puffs with her neighbors and all her windows are always open, to let the mountain's breath inside the house.
She is alone, and occasionally lonesome, but it matters not: the wind loves her well and so she can never be lonely.”
— Anonymous |Some Secret I’ve Heard Before|
“For where men have made the earth that is trodden underfoot, and have largely veiled the heavens themselves, it is but natural that they should think that they have made everything, and that it is they who rule it.”
― Robert Hugh Benson |Come Rack! Come Rope!|
“All these years, I’ve loved and watched you. I wonder, did I always know that the prize I set my life on was not worth winning? Your heart clings faithfully to a memory because that is all you are capable of. Your soul is shallow. You cannot feel a love as deep as mine. As real as mine. The truth is — you are not worthy, you never were worthy of the lifetime of foolish love I have devoted to you. Goodbye, Amelia. Let it end; we are both weary of it.”
— William Makepeace Thackeray |Vanity Fair|
"And the dread sits a' breast again, smoldering, suffocating —
Submerged in mold, west dust that drowns —
And the dread sits a' breast again."
- Lily Pelok |Coming Home|
“Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy”
— John Keats |Excerpt from An Ode to a Nightingale|
“ (…) I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close… I will love you until your face is fogged by distant memory. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else and I will love you if you never marry at all, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all. That is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.”
— Lemony Snicket |The Beatrice Letters|
“Eventually something you love is going to taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying, thinking, “I’m falling to the floor crying,” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it - you knew it would happen, and even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and realize you didn’t paint it very well.”
— Richard Siken |Crush|
“And he would go back to his corner, sit down, hide his face in his hands and again sink into dreams and reminiscences… and again he was haunted by hopes.”
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky |The Possessed - trans. Constance Garnett|
“I paint the tombs of the prophets. I help people look up from those pews and dream. They look up and they imagine that if they lived back in Christ's time, they wouldn't have done what the others did. They would have murdered those whom they now adore. I paint all this suffering, but I don't suffer myself. I make a living of it. What we do is just create sympathy. We create admirers. We don't create followers. Christ's life is a demand. You don't want to be reminded of it. So we don't have to see what happens to the truth. A darker time is coming when men will be more clever. They won't fight the truth. They'll just ignore it. I paint their comfortable Christ, with a halo over his head. How can I show what I haven't lived? Someday I might have the courage to venture. Someday I'll paint the true Christ.”
— Terrence Malick |A Hidden Life|