Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.
— William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Quentin, I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather excruciatingly apt that you will use it to gain the reductio ad absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his fathers’. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.
— William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
But it is a mistake, this extreme precision, this orderly and military progress in life; a convenience, a lie. There is always deep below it, even when we arrive punctually at the appointed time with our white waistcoats and polite formalities, a rushing stream of broken dreams, nursery rhymes, street cries, half-finished sentences and sights that rise and sink.
So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
— Jorge Luis Borges
(Source: takemetothemtn, via tresclassy)
There are no mermaid lagoons; there are still, deep waters where lonely boys drown themselves. There are no pirate captains; there are trenches and bullets and razor wire. We do not fly, Mrs. Hargreaves, nor could we ever.
— John Logan’s “Peter and Alice”
(Source: girlwithakiwi, via hermioneandthegrangers)
Posted May 9, 2013 at 11:31pm in only if i could watch this right now in london but alas lit quote
|
201 notes
‘Gone mad’ is what they say, and sometimes ‘Run mad,’ as if mad is a direction, like west; as if mad is a different house you could step into, or a separate country entirely. But when you go mad you don’t go any other place, you stay where you are. And somebody else comes in.
— Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace
Posted April 7, 2013 at 6:20pm in Margaret Atwood Alias Grace one of the most accurate quotes on mental illness i've ever seen lit quote
|
13 notes
- You…you’ve been here quite a long time, haven’t you?
- What? Oh…yes. Ever since I married What’s-her-name. Uh, Martha. Even before that. Forever. Dashed hopes, and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested. How do you like that for a declension, young man?
- What? Oh…yes. Ever since I married What’s-her-name. Uh, Martha. Even before that. Forever. Dashed hopes, and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested. How do you like that for a declension, young man?
— Edward Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Posted March 29, 2013 at 8:01pm in Edward Albee Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? what a play and the ending lit
|
1 note
Sitting in a cafe near the Jardin du Luxembourg reviewing the suicide scene, I noticed that Javert committed suicide between two bridges: the Pont Notre Dame and the Pont au Change. I looked these sites up on the map and was stunned to realize Javert is standing literally in between the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Palais de Justice: the symbol of Grace and the symbol of the Law. Not only were these buildings in his line of site, he is standing smack in the middle of them. Grace on his left, Law on his right. Looking up from the Seine River, Javert would have confronted visually the very conflict that was raging in his mind. Does he follow Grace or does he follow the Law? Caught between the two and unable to reconcile them, he casts himself into the Seine.
— This blog entry gives Google Maps locations for many of the important locations in Les Miserables and then this happened and help I can’t (via comfortableandkind)
(Source: thehumantrampoline, via hermioneandthegrangers)
The best argument for verse memorization may be that it provides us with knowledge of a qualitatively and physiologically different variety: you take the poem inside you, into your brain chemistry if not your blood, and you know it at a deeper, bodily level than if you simply read it off a screen. Robson puts the point succinctly: “If we do not learn by heart, the heart does not feel the rhythms of poetry as echoes or variations of its own insistent beat.
— Brad Leithauser
I loved you head over handles
like my first bicycle accident—
before the mouthful of gravel and blood,
I swore we were flying.
like my first bicycle accident—
before the mouthful of gravel and blood,
I swore we were flying.
— Sierra Demulder, from “Cycle of Abuse”
(Source: spokenwordacademy)
I can’t tell you just how wonderful she is. I don’t want you to know. I don’t want any one to know.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald - This Side of Paradise
(Source: larmoyante, via holdenandcaulfield)
Posted February 4, 2013 at 5:57pm in f. scott fitzgerald this side of paradise quote lit
|
27,749 notes
“As a writer you are free. You are about the freest person that ever was. Your freedom is what you have bought with your solitude, your loneliness.”—Ursula K. Le Guin
(Source: kyounghpark, via ellephanta)
