--F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful And The Damned
I had traded the fight against love for the fight against loneliness, the fight against life for the fight against death.
--F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful And The Damned Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot, and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand.
--F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful And The Damned I am grateful for all those dark years, even though in retrospect they seem like a long, bitter prayer that was answered finally.
--Marilynne Robinson, Gilead But see that you get on. That's your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. Pull your act together and just go on. --Stephen King, The Shining Actually that’s my secret — I can’t even talk about you to anybody because I don’t want any more people to know how wonderful you are. --F.Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is The NIght Did you ever have a sister? did you? --William Faulkner, The Sound And The Fury What could a child know of the darkness of God's plan? Or how flesh is so frail it is hardly more than a dream? --Cormac McCarthy, Suttree Actually, orcas aren't quite as complex as scientists imagine. Most killer whales are just four tons of doofus dressed up like a police car. --Christopher Moore, Fluke: Or, I Know Why The Winged Whale Sings It was wrong to do this,' said the angel.
'You should live like a flower, Holding malice like a puppy, Waging war like a lambkin.' 'Not so,' quoth the man Who had no fear of spirits; 'It is only wrong for angels Who can live like the flowers, Holding malice like the puppies, Waging war like the lambkins.' --Stephen Crane There were so many different ways to be beautiful. --Michael Cunningham, A Home At The End Of The World It’s more that I’m afraid of time. And not having enough of it. Time to figure out who I’m supposed to be… to find my place in the world before I have to leave it. I’m afraid of what I’ll miss. --Ann Brashares, The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants Life plays the same lovely and agonizing joke on all of us. --F.Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful And The Damned We stand there, quiet. My questions all seem wrong: How did you get so old? Was it all at once, in a day, or did you peter out bit by bit? When did you stop having parties? Did everyone else get old too, or was it just you? Are other people still here, hiding in the palm trees or holding their breath underwater? When did you last swim your laps? Do your bones hurt? Did you know this was coming and hide that you knew, or did it ambush you from behind? --Jennifer Egan, A Visit From The Goon Squad The smell of peace is abroad, the air is cold, the skies are brittle, and the leaves have finally fallen. I wear a pony coat with skin like watered silk and muff of lamb. My fingers lie in depths of warmth. I have a jacket of silver sequins and heavy bracelets of rich corals. I wear about my neck a triple thread-like chain of lapis lazulis and pearls. On my face is softness and content like a veil of golden moonlight. And I have never in all my lives been so lonely. --Erik Larson, In The Garden Of Beasts: Love Terror, And An American Family In Hitler's Berlin DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.
--Terri Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice And Accurate Prophecies Of Agnes Nutter, Witch All I think of ever is that I love you. --F.Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful And The Damned The groove is so mysterious. We're born with it and we lose it and the world seems to split apart before our eyes into stupid and cool. When we get it back, the world unifies around us, and both stupid and cool fall away. I am grateful to those who are keepers of the groove. The babies and the grandmas who hang on to it and help us remember when we forget that any kind of dancing is better than no dancing at all. --Lynda Barry, One Hundred Demons So it came to pass that as he trudged from the place of blood and wrath his soul changed. --Stephen Crane, The Red Badge Of Courage All I ever wanted was a world without maps. --Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient He will talk to me a little while, too shy to tell me why he has come, and then he will thank me and leave, walking backward a few steps, thinking, Yes, the barn is still there, yes, the lilacs, even the pot of petunias. This was my father's house. And I will think, He is young. He cannot know that my whole life has come down to this moment. That he has answered his father's prayers. --Marilynne Robinson, Home A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding veil and some in headgear or cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses’ ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.
--Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, Or The Evening Redness In The West There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty. --John Steinbeck, East Of Eden What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us are wrapped up in parentheses. --John Irving, The Cider House Rules Tired, tired with nothing, tired with everything, tired with the world’s weight he had never chosen to bear. --F.Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful And Damned Clarissa will be bereaved, deeply lonely, but she will not die. She will be too much in love with life, with London. Virginia imagines someone else, yes, someone strong of body but frail-minded; someone with a touch of genius, of poetry, ground under by the wheels of the world, by war and government, by doctors; a someone who is, technically speaking insane, because that person sees meaning everywhere, knows that trees are sentient beings and sparrows sing in Greek. Yes, someone like that. Clarissa, sane Clarissa -exultant, ordinary Clarissa - will go on, loving London, loving her life of ordinary pleasures, and someone else, a deranged poet, a visionary, will be the one to die. --Michael Cunningham, The Hours The stuff of nightmare is their plain bread. They butter it with pain. They set their clocks by deathwatch beetles, and thrive the centuries. They were the men with the leather-ribbon whips who sweated up the Pyramids seasoning it with other people's salt and other people's cracked hearts. They coursed Europe on the White Horses of the Plague. They whispered to Caesar that he was mortal, then sold daggers at half-price in the grand March sale. Some must have been lazing clowns, foot props for emperors, princes, and epileptic popes. Then out on the road, Gypsies in time, their populations grew as the world grew, spread, and there was more delicious variety of pain to thrive on. The train put wheels under them and here they run down the log road out of the Gothic and baroque; look at their wagons and coaches, the carving like medieval shrines, all of it stuff once drawn by horses, mules, or, maybe, men. --Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes I shall go on shining as a brilliantly meaningless figure in a meaningless world.
--F.Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful And The Damned "I'm sorry," I say. "I didn't give you everything you wanted. I wasn't everything you wanted. You were everything I wanted." --Kaui Hart Hemmings, The Descendants Just remember: If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only be the beginning of eternity. --Truman Capote, In Cold Blood There are plenty of good reasons for fighting...but no good reason to ever hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive....it's that part of an imbecile that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly. --Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night You are your best thing. --Toni Morrison, Beloved |
Alissa B.Nothing commonplace about The Common Place. Archives
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