#irs

[A]rt can’t ever be programmatic . . . it needs on the contrary to be complicating, subtle, questioning, doubtful and doubting. ↗

— Tony Leuzzi

#art

A more accurate statement would be that I was the first person since Jedi who was permitted to stick a fork into the piecrust to see if there was still any steam underneath. ↗

— Timothy Zahn

#any #first #fork #i #into

Me dad planted that tree,’ she said absently, pointing out through the old cracked window. The great beech filled at least half the sky and shook shadows all over the house. Its roots clutched the slope like a giant hand, holding the hill in place. Its trunk writhed with power, threw off veils of green dust, rose towering into the air, branched into a thousand shaded alleys, became a city for owls and squirrels. I had thought such trees to be as old as the earth, I never dreamed that a man could make them. Yet it was Granny Trill’s dad who had planted this tree, had thrust in the seed with his finger. How old must he have been to leave such a mark? Think of Granny’s age, and add his on top, and you were back at the beginning of the world. ↗

— Laurie Lee

#memoirs #nature #tree #age

The only true love is love at first sight; second sight dispels it. ↗

— Israel Zangwill

#love #love at first sight #love is #only #second

Colpo di fulmine. The thunderbolt, as Italians call it. When love strikes someone like lightning, so powerful and intense it can’t be denied. It’s beautiful and messy, cracking a chest open and spilling their soul out for the world to see. It turns a person inside out, and there’s no going back from it. Once the thunderbolt hits, your life is irrevocably changed. ↗

— J.M. Darhower

#love #love-at-first-sight #beauty

Lena's hair was sticking out in about fifteen directions, and her eyes were all small and puffy from crying. So this was what girls looked like in the morning. I had never seen one, not up close. ↗

— Kami Garcia

#first-love #morning #beauty

The clue to everything a man should love and fear in her was there right from the start in the ironic smile that primed and swelled the archery of her full lips. There was pride in that smile and confidence in the set of her fine nose. Without understanding why I knew beyond question that a lot of people would mistake her pride for arrogance and confuse her confidence with impassivity. I didn't make that mistake. My eyes were lost swimming floating free in the shimmering lagoon of her steady even stare. Her eyes were large and spectacularly green. It was the green that trees are in vivid dreams. It was the green that the sea would be if the sea were perfect. ↗

— Gregory David Roberts

#love-at-first-sight #women #beauty

People talk about the beauty of the spring, but I can't see it. The trees are brown and bare, slimy with rain. Some are crawling with new purple hairs. And the buds are bulging like tumorous acne, and I can tell that something wet, and soft, and cold, and misshapen is about to be born. And I am turning into a vampire. ↗

— M.T. Anderson

#thirsty #vampire #beauty

There are only two kinds of people in our town. The stupid and the stuck." ↗

— Kami Garcia

#first-lines #opening-lines #beauty

I never really wanted to die. But I followed through anyway. The pain in my heart was excruciating, and death was beautiful. ↗

— Rae Hachton

#death-and-dying #first-lines #gothic-fantasy #gothic-romance #love