#lex

Music resembles poetry, in each Are nameless graces which no methods teach, And which a master hand alone can reach. ↗

— Alexander Pope

#an-essay-on-criticism #art #genius #music #poet

A beautifully-rendered family saga—full of fires, affairs, aristocrats and illegitimate children. At the center is an endearing heroine, whose eccentric childhood on the Grey Gardens-style Rokeby estate would make Dickens gasp. . . . Splendid. ↗

— JENNIFER VANDERBES AUTHOR OF EASTER ISLAND AND STRANGERS AT THE FEAST

#astor-orphan #beauty

Raven: "You don't have a hot date, do you?" Alexander: "Yes. I do, as a matter of fact." Raven: "You do?" Alexander: "Yes, and it is almost ending. ↗

— Ellen Schreiber

#alexander-sterling #ellen-schreiber #raven #raven-madison #the-coffin-club

it occurs to me that there is so much I never knew about him--his past, his role in the resistance, what his life was like in the Wilds, before he came to Portland, and I feel a flash of grief so intense it almost makes me cry out: not for what I lost, but for the chances I missed. ↗

— Lauren Oliver

#chances #lena #longing-for-death #requiem #death

We're all dead the moment we're born. Just, some of us get there faster than others. ↗

— Alex Scarrow

#death #eternal-war #life #death

Independence isn't all it's cracked up to be, you know. What country could be more independent than Russia? And in Russia now there isn't a squeak or a pinpoint of light. I have nowhere to publish. The Contemporary has stuck its head up out of harm's way. So I've stopped quarrelling with the world. I sat in this chair the first morning I woke up in this house ... and for the first time ... for a long time, there was silence. I didn't have to talk or think or move, nothing was expected of me, I knew nobody and nobody knew where i was, everything was behind me, all the moving from place to place, the quarrels and celebrations, the desperate concerns of health and happiness, love, death, printer's errors, picnics ruined by rain, the endless tumult of life ... and I just sat quiet and alone all day, looking at the tops of trees on Primrose Hill through the mist. ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#death

The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle. ↗

— Michael Denton

#biology #chance #chemical-evolution #coincidence #id

You have a pet theory, one you have been turning over for years, that life itself is a kind of Rube Goldberg device, an extremely complicated machine designed to carry out the extremely simple task of constructing your soul. ↗

— Kevin Brockmeier

#life #rube-goldberg #soul #design

Brittany Ellis, I'm goin' to prove to you I'm the guy you believed in ten months ago, and I'm gonna be the successful man you dreamed I could be. My plan is to ask you to marry me four years from now, the day we graduate."'And I guarantee you a lifetime of fun, probably one with no lack of fightin', for you are one passionate mamacita . . . but I definitely look forward to some great make-up sessions. Maybe one day we can even go back to Fairfield and help make it the place my dad always hoped it would be. You, me, and Shelley. And any other Fuentes or Ellis family member who wants to be a part of our lives. We'll be one big, crazy Mexican-American family. What do you think? Mujer, you own my soul. ↗

— Simone Elkeles

#fuentes #dreams

Alexander the Great slept with 'The Iliad' beneath his pillow. During the waning moon, I cradle Homer’s 'Odyssey' as if it were the sweet body of a woman. ↗

— Roman Payne

#classics #dreams #greek #heroism #homer