#literature

A midst deceit I found the truth; there in the rough I found a diamond. And from the moment we met, I think of no one else Today I choose to be, to live and breathe; to dream, to weep, and to sing in free verse. And you, the object of my delight: a like-minded opposite I am myself with, a mind-fuck times six, seven, eight thousand and three. I know that you love me with every inch of your deep. ↗

— Donato DiCristino

#arts #blog #donato #free-verse #glbt

[On Female Attraction to Men in Uniform] That male military persona feeds a subconscious, passive-aggressive female desire to dominate the warrior as he is perceived an iconic example of masculinity (particularly amongst traditionally warlike cultures). The damsel in distress theme always struck me as embodying this: the hapless, innocently beautiful woman unwittingly enraptures the heroic male so completely that he would risk all to submit to her at his own peril, and quite in spite of it. ↗

— Tiffany Madison

#literature #military-theory #passive-aggressive #romantic-themes #warrior

It is beautiful to talk about beautiful things and even more beautiful to silently gaze at them. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#beauty #dejan-stojanovic #gaze #literature #literature-quotes

Novels institutionalize the ruse of eros. It becomes a narrative texture of sustained incongruence, emotional and cognitive. It permits the reader to stand in triangular relation to the characters in the story and reach into the text after the objects of their desire, sharing their longing but also detached from it, seeing their view of reality but also its mistakenness. It is almost like being in love. ↗

— Anne Carson

#desire #eros #eros-the-bittersweet #literature #novels

No sooner have you feasted on beauty with your eyes than your mind tells you that beauty is vain and beauty passes ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#christiana-rossetti #inspiration #literature #vain #victorian-literature

Ah, you pitiful, pitiful creatures! Beautiful family! Nobler far than stupid men..." he cried softly to himself. What was he doing here with his arrow? Cornering these creatures? Armor--an armor to brag about! Save his dignity before that armor-maker because of a promise? Foolish...foolish! If the old man jeered at him, why should it matter anymore; a common suit of armor would do as well! Armor did not make a man, nor did it signify valor. "Dumb creatures that you are, how magnificent! Sorrow, love--parental love incarnate! Were I that fox--what if Tokiko and Shigemori were trapped like this? Even the beast can rise above itself--could I as much? ↗

— Eiji Yoshikawa

#taira-no-kiyomori #the-heike-story #beauty

There’s an immense dramatic possibility in describing that universe. The books, for me, were an enormous relief in that sense of how they were written to allow primary emotion, elemental emotion, to matter enormously but to give the thing an extraordinary flow so you don’t notice at what point that you’re actually overwhelmed by this. There’s no showiness, at all. It’s the opposite of showiness. I think, if it was a painting, it could be very grey abstract, almost, with some lines and very, very beautiful. But you wouldn’t have a notion of where the beauty was. (Talking about the short stories of Alistair MacLeod, who he discovered while working on The Modern Library.) ↗

— Colm Tóibín

#fiction #short-stories #beauty

Needless to say, the business of living interferes with the solitude so needed for any work of the imagination. Here's what Virginia Woolf said in her diary about the sticky issue: "I've shirked two parties, and another Frenchman, and buying a hat, and tea with Hilda Trevelyan, for I really can't combine all this with keeping all my imaginary people going. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#writers-on-writing #business

I tell the story to you now, but in each telling the story itself changes a little, changes direction, and that in turn changes you and me. So be very careful not only in how you repeat it but in how you remember it, goslings. More often than you realize it, the world is shaped by two things -- stories told and the memories they leave behind. ↗

— Vera Nazarian

#evolution #fiction #future #influence #literature

I have grown weary of literature: silence alone comforts me. If I continue to write, it’s because I have nothing more to accomplish in this world except to wait for death. Searching for the word in darkness. Any little success invades me and puts me in full view of everyone. I long to wallow in the mud. I can scarcely control my need for self-abasement, my craving for licentiousness and debauchery. Sin tempts me, forbidden pleasures lure me. I want to be both pig and hen, then kill them and drink their blood. ↗

— Clarice Lispector

#literature #death