β
When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.
β
β
Albert Einstein
β
The truth is what I make it. I could set this world on fire and call it rain.
β
β
Victoria Aveyard (Red Queen (Red Queen, #1))
β
From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere!
β
β
Dr. Seuss (One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish)
β
I'm not going to wear a red dress," she said.
"It would look stunning, My Lady," she called.
She spoke to the bubbles gathered on the surface of the water. "If there's anyone I wish to stun at dinner, I'll hit him in the face.
β
β
Kristin Cashore (Graceling (Graceling Realm, #1))
β
How long was I asleep?" she whispered. He didn't respond.
"How long was I asleep?" she asked again, and noticed a hint of red in his cheeks.
"You were asleep, too?"
"Until you began drooling on my shoulder.
β
β
Sarah J. Maas (Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1))
β
She smiled then, her eyes red, her cheeks scattered with some kind of dust. It was a smile he thought he might die to earn again.
β
β
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
β
A good book is an event in my life.
β
β
Stendhal (The Red and the Black)
β
Rise, red as the dawn.
β
β
Victoria Aveyard (Red Queen (Red Queen, #1))
β
I'm coming back into focus when Caesar asks him if he has a girlfriend back home. Peeta hesitates, then gives an unconvincing shake of his head.
Handsome lad like you. There must be some special girl. Come on, whatβs her name?" says Caesar.
Peeta sighs. "Well, there is this one girl. Iβve had a crush on her ever since I can remember. But Iβm pretty sure she didnβt know I was alive until the reaping."
Sounds of sympathy from the crowd. Unrequited love they can relate to.
She have another fellow?" asks Caesar.
I donβt know, but a lot of boys like her," says Peeta.
So, hereβs what you do. You win, you go home. She canβt turn you down then, eh?" says Caesar encouragingly.
I donβt think itβs going to work out. Winning...wonβt help in my case," says Peeta.
Why ever not?" says Caesar, mystified.
Peeta blushes beet red and stammers out. "Because...because...she came here with me.
β
β
Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1))
β
He stepped back and threw his arms out.
"I'm always crazy around you Rose. Here, I'm going to write an impromptu poem for you."
He tipped his head back and shouted to the sky:
"Rose is in red
But never in blue
Sharp as a thorn
Fights like one too.
β
β
Richelle Mead (Shadow Kiss (Vampire Academy, #3))
β
Finally, she mused that human existence is as brief as the life of autumn grass, so what was there to fear from taking chances with your life?
β
β
Mo Yan (Red Sorghum)
β
The first duty of wine is to be red. Don't talk to me of your white wines.
β
β
Henri Murger
β
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple. With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
β
β
Jenny Joseph (Warning: When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple)
β
Anyone can betray anyone.
β
β
Victoria Aveyard (Red Queen (Red Queen, #1))
β
Home isn't where you're from, it's where you find light when all grows dark.
β
β
Pierce Brown (Golden Son (Red Rising Saga, #2))
β
If there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it walls, and we will furnish it with soft, red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweller's felt so that we should never hear it. Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.
β
β
Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything Is Illuminated)
β
Thinking about history makes me wonder how Iβll fit into it one day, I guess. And you too. I kinda wish people still wrote like that. History, huh? Bet we could make some.
β
β
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
β
Straight people, he thinks, probably don't spend this much time convincing themselves that they're straight.
β
β
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
β
It takes strength and courage to admit the truth.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles, #1))
β
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
and I eat men like air.
β
β
Sylvia Plath (Ariel: The Restored Edition)
β
Peeta, you said at the interview youβd had a crush on me forever. When did forever start?
Oh, letβs see. I guess the first day of school. We were five. You had on a red plaid dress and your hair...it was in two braids instead of one. My father pointed you out when we were waiting to line up."
Your father? Why?"
He said, βSee that little girl? I wanted to marry her mother, but she ran off with a coal miner.'"
What? Youβre making that up!"
No, true story. And I said, 'A coal miner? Why did she want a coal miner if she couldβve had you?' And he said, 'Because when he sings...even the birds stop to listen.
β
β
Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1))
β
You don't have to disrespect and insult others simply to hold your own ground. If you do, that shows how shaky your own position is.
β
β
Red Haircrow
β
Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.
β
β
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
β
When it was dark, you always carried the sun in your hand for me.
β
β
SeΓ‘n O'Casey (THREE MORE PLAYS BY SEAN O'CASEY:THE SILVER TASSIE;PURPLE DUST;RED ROSES FOR ME [Paperback])
β
Stay,β she panted. Tears leaked from her eyes. βStay till the end.β
βAnd after,β he said. βAnd always.β
βI want to feel safe again. I want to go home to Ravka.β
βThen Iβll take you there. Weβll set fire to raisins or whatever you heathens do for fun.β
βZealot,β she said weakly.
βWitch.β
βBarbarian.β
βNina,β he whispered, βlittle red bird. Donβt go.
β
β
Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1))
β
You do not follow me because I am the strongest. Pax is. You do not follow me because I am the brightest. Mustang is. You follow me because you do not know where you are going. I do.
β
β
Pierce Brown (Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1))
β
I will love you always. When this red hair is white, I will still love you. When the smooth softness of youth is replaced by the delicate softness of age, I will still want to touch your skin. When your face is full of the lines of every smile you have ever smiled, of every surprise I have seen flash through your eyes, when every tear you have ever cried has left its mark upon your face,I will treasure you all the more, because I was there to see it all. I will share your life with you, Meredith, and I will love you until the last breath leaves your body or mine.
β
β
Laurell K. Hamilton (A Lick of Frost (Merry Gentry, #6))
β
I felt like one of Apollo's sacred cows- slow, dumb, and bright red.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #5))
β
He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink.
β
β
Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway)
β
I don't want to be a tree; I want to be its meaning.
β
β
Orhan Pamuk (My Name Is Red)
β
Before I could figure out how to apologize for being such an idiot, she tackled me with a hug, then pulled away just as quickly. "I'm glad you're not a guinea pig."
"Me, too." I hoped my face wasn't as red as it felt.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2))
β
Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful. It was just red.
β
β
Kait Rokowski
β
As a lamp, a cataract, a star in space
an illusion, a dewdrop, a bubble
a dream, a cloud, a flash of lightning
view all created things like this.
β
β
Red Pine (The Diamond Sutra)
β
The gods rule us still. They have come down from the stars. And they are no longer kind.
β
β
Victoria Aveyard (Red Queen (Red Queen, #1))
β
Saying his name stabbed my heart, like someone had ripped through my carefully stitched up world and exposed the infected, pulsing red tissue that I thought was healing.
β
β
Colleen Houck
β
You are", he says, "the absolute worst idea I've ever had.
β
β
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
β
That's the choice. I love him, with all that, because of all that. On purpose. I love him on purpose.
β
β
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
β
Blue does not go with everything," Will told her. "It does not go with red, for instance."
"I have a red and blue striped waistcoat," Henry interjected, reaching for the peas.
"And if that isn't proof that those two colors should never be seen together under Heaven, I don't know what is.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
β
Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.
β
β
Pierce Brown (Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1))
β
Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red.
β
β
Clive Barker (Books of Blood: Volumes One to Three (Books of Blood, #1-3))
β
What I need and what I want are two very different things.
β
β
Victoria Aveyard (Red Queen (Red Queen, #1))
β
Donβt worry if people think youβre crazy. You are crazy. You have that kind of intoxicating insanity that lets other people dream outside of the lines and become who theyβre destined to be.
β
β
Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
β
I can't believe I said it out loud. The truth doesn't set you free, you know. It makes you feel awkward and embarrassed and defenseless and red in the face and horrified and petrified and vulnerable. But free? I don't feel free. I feel like shit.
β
β
Melina Marchetta (Saving Francesca)
β
Words can lie. See beyond them.
β
β
Victoria Aveyard (Red Queen (Red Queen, #1))
β
You should know the difference between secrets and lies.
β
β
Victoria Aveyard (Red Queen (Red Queen, #1))
β
Beauty, to me, is about being comfortable in your own skin. That, or a kick-ass red lipstick.
β
β
Gwyneth Paltrow
β
Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.
And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.
And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.
β
β
Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
β
War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.
β
β
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
β
There's nothing wrong with being different.
β
β
Victoria Aveyard (Red Queen (Red Queen, #1))
β
I told you to hide your heart once. You should have listened.
β
β
Victoria Aveyard (Red Queen (Red Queen, #1))
β
I'm the son of Jupiter, I'm a child of Rome, consul to demigods, praetor of the First Legion. I slew the Trojan sea monster, I toppled the black throne of Kronos, and destroyed Titan Krios with my own hand. And now I'm going to destroy you Porphyrion, and feed you to your own wolves."
"Wow, dude," Leo muttered, "You been eating red meat?
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Lost Hero (The Heroes of Olympus, #1))
β
There is no greater plague to an introvert than the extrovert.
β
β
Pierce Brown (Golden Son (Red Rising Saga, #2))
β
Sometimes you just jump and hope it's not a cliff.
β
β
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
β
Friendships take minutes to make, moments to break, years to repair.
β
β
Pierce Brown (Golden Son (Red Rising Saga, #2))
β
Red hair, sir, in my opinion, is dangerous.
β
β
P.G. Wodehouse (Very Good, Jeeves! (Jeeves, #4))
β
When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?
β
β
Shel Silverstein (A Light in the Attic)
β
It's our nature. We destroy. It's the constant of our kind. No matter the color of blood, man will always fall.
β
β
Victoria Aveyard (Red Queen (Red Queen, #1))
β
Leo: βI canβt believe I thought you were hot.β
Khioneβs face turned red. βHot? You dare insult me? I am cold, Leo Valdez. Very, very cold.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Lost Hero (The Heroes of Olympus, #1))
β
Well, I certainly don't," said Percy sanctimoniously. "I shudder to think what the state of my in-tray would be if I was away from work for five days."
"Yeah, someone might slip dragon dung in it again, eh, Perce?" said Fred.
"That was a sample of fertilizer from Norway!" said Percy, going very red in the face. "It was nothing personal!"
"It was," Fred whispered to Harry as they got up from the table. "We sent it.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4))
β
If you can't go back to your mother's womb, you'd better learn to be a good fighter.
β
β
Anchee Min (Red Azalea: A Memoir)
β
Sage," he said. "What are you wearing?"
I sighed and stared down at the dress. "I know. It's red. Don't start. I'm tired of hearing about it."
"Funny," he said. "I don't think I could ever get tired of looking at it.
β
β
Richelle Mead (The Golden Lily (Bloodlines, #2))
β
Flame and shadow. One cannot exist without the other.
β
β
Victoria Aveyard (Red Queen (Red Queen, #1))
β
If you know someone's fear, you know them.
β
β
Victoria Aveyard (Red Queen (Red Queen, #1))
β
You see, women are like fires, like flames. Some women are like candles, bright and friendly. Some are like single sparks, or embers, like fireflies for chasing on summer nights. Some are like campfires, all light and heat for a night and willing to be left after. Some women are like hearthfires, not much to look at but underneath they are all warm red coal that burns a long, long while.
β
β
Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1))
β
The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake.
Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?
We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.
They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth.
β
β
George R.R. Martin
β
I would have lived in peace. But my enemies brought me war.
β
β
Pierce Brown (Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1))
β
No one is born evil, just like no one is born alone. They become that way, through choice and circumstance.
β
β
Victoria Aveyard (Glass Sword (Red Queen, #2))
β
Black for hunting through the night
For death and mourning the color's white
Gold for a bride in her wedding gown
And red to call the enchantment down
White silk when our bodies burn
Blue banners when the lost return
Flame for the birth of a Nephilim
And to wash away our sins.
Gray for the knowledge best untold
Bone for those who don't grow old
Saffron lights the victory march
Green to mend our broken hearts
Silver for the demon towers
And bronze to summon wicked powers
-Shadowhunter children's rhyme
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
β
Until this moment, Wylan hadn't quite understood how much they meant to him. His father would have sneered at these thugs and thieves, a disgraced soldier, a gambler who couldn't keep out of the red. But they were his first friends, his only friends, and Wylan knew that even if he'd had his pick of a thousand companions, these would have been the people he chose.
β
β
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
β
I didn't tell you this because I'm sure you would've changed your mind about the dress."
"What?" I frowned. "Does it make my butt look big?"
She laughed. "No. You looked stunning in it."
"Then what's the deal?"
Her smile turned downright mischievous. "Oh, you know, just that the color red is Daemon's favorite.
β
β
Jennifer L. Armentrout (Obsidian (Lux, #1))
β
If I am a sword, I am a sword made of glass, and I feel myself beginning to shatter.
β
β
Victoria Aveyard (Glass Sword (Red Queen, #2))
β
Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.
β
β
Stephen King (Different Seasons)
β
In the fairy tales, the poor girl smiles when she becomes a princess. Right now, I don't know if I'll ever smile again.
β
β
Victoria Aveyard (Red Queen (Red Queen, #1))
β
To look powerful is to be powerful.
β
β
Victoria Aveyard (Red Queen (Red Queen, #1))
β
Everything I was I carry with me, everything I will be lies waiting on the road ahead.
β
β
Ma Jian (Red Dust: A Path Through China)
β
History, huh?
β
β
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
β
Oh no." I said panic rising in my chest. "No, no, no, Somebody get a can opener. I've got a god in my head!!
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles, #1))
β
Die, enemies of Ra!" Sekhemet yelled. "Perish in agony!"
"She's almost as annoying as you," I told Horus.
"Impossible," Horus said. "No one bests Horus.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles, #1))
β
I see a world on the edge of a blade. Without balance, it will fall.
β
β
Victoria Aveyard (Red Queen (Red Queen, #1))
β
But the truth is, also, simply this: love is indomitable.
β
β
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
β
As Qhuinn looked at his best friend's handsome face, he felt as if he'd never not known that red hair, those blue eyes, those lips, that jaw. And it was because of their long history that he searched for something to say, something that would get them back to where they had been. All that came to him was . . . I miss you. I miss you so fucking bad it hurts, but I don't know how to find you even though you're right in front of me.
β
β
J.R. Ward (Lover Mine (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #8))
β
A towel, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
β
β
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhikerβs Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
β
If You Forget Me
I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
I have been feeling very clearheaded lately and what I want to write about today is the sea. It contains so many colors. Silver at dawn, green at noon, dark blue in the evening. Sometimes it looks almost red. Or it will turn the color of old coins. Right now the shadows of clouds are dragging across it, and patches of sunlight are touching down everywhere. White strings of gulls drag over it like beads.
It is my favorite thing, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes I catch myself staring at it and forget my duties. It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel.
β
β
Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See)
β
Should I tell you that when we're apart, your body comes back to me in dreams? That when I sleep, I see you, the dip of your waist, the freckle above your hip, and when I wake up in the morning, it feels like I've just been with you, the phantom touch of your hand on the back of my neck fresh and not imagined? That I can feel your skin against mine, and it makes every bone in my body ache? That, for a few moments, I can hold my breath and be back there with you, in a dream, in a thousand rooms, nowhere at all?
β
β
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
β
I know that David Tennant's Hamlet isn't till July. And lots of people are going to be doing Dr Who in Hamlet jokes, so this is just me getting it out of the way early, to avoid the rush...
"To be, or not to be, that is the question. Weeelll.... More of A question really. Not THE question. Because, well, I mean, there are billions and billions of questions out there, and well, when I say billions, I mean, when you add in the answers, not just the questions, weeelll, you're looking at numbers that are positively astronomical and... for that matter the other question is what you lot are doing on this planet in the first place, and er, did anyone try just pushing this little red button?
β
β
Neil Gaiman
β
I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
β
β
James Joyce (Ulysses)
β
I know exactly how that is. To love somebody who doesnβt deserve it. Because they are all you have. Because any attention is better than no attention. For exactly the same reason, it is sometimes satisfying to cut yourself and bleed. On those gray days where eight in the morning looks no different from noon and nothing has happened and nothing is going to happen and you are washing a glass in the sink and it breaks-accidentally-and punctures your skin. And then there is this shocking red, the brightest thing in the day, so vibrant it buzzes, this blood of yours. That is okay sometimes because at least you know youβre alive.
β
β
Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors)
β
Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere break of day
To seek the pale enchanted gold.
The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,
While hammers fell like ringing bells
In places deep, where dark things sleep,
In hollow halls beneath the fells.
For ancient king and elvish lord
There many a gleaming golden hoard
They shaped and wrought, and light they caught
To hide in gems on hilt of sword.
On silver necklaces they strung
The flowering stars, on crowns they hung
The dragon-fire, in twisted wire
They meshed the light of moon and sun.
Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away, ere break of day,
To claim our long-forgotten gold.
Goblets they carved there for themselves
And harps of gold; where no man delves
There lay they long, and many a song
Was sung unheard by men or elves.
The pines were roaring on the height,
The wind was moaning in the night.
The fire was red, it flaming spread;
The trees like torches blazed with light.
The bells were ringing in the dale
And men looked up with faces pale;
The dragon's ire more fierce than fire
Laid low their towers and houses frail.
The mountain smoked beneath the moon;
The dwarves, they heard the tramp of doom.
They fled their hall to dying fall
Beneath his feet, beneath the moon.
Far over the misty mountains grim
To dungeons deep and caverns dim
We must away, ere break of day,
To win our harps and gold from him!
β
β
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (The Lord of the Rings, #0))
β
I thought, this is the most incredible thing I have ever seen, and I had better keep it a safe distance away from me. I thought, if someone like that ever loved me, it would set me on fire.
And then I was a careless fool, and I fell in love with you anyway. When you rang me at truly shocking hours of the night, I loved you. When you kissed me in disgusting public toilets and pouted in hotel bars and made me happy in ways in which it had never even occurred to me that a mangled-up, locked-up person like me could be happy, I loved you.
And then, inexplicably, you had the absolute audacity to love me back. Can you believe it?
Sometimes, even now, I still can't.
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Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
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He would have told her - he would have said, it matters not if you are here or there, for I see you before me every moment. I see you in the light of the water, in the swaying of the young trees in the spring wind. I see you in the shadows of the great oaks, I hear your voice in the cry of the owl at night. You are the blood in my veins, and the beating of my heart. You are my first waking thought, and my last sigh before sleeping. You are - you are bone of my bone, and breath of my breath.
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Juliet Marillier (Daughter of the Forest (Sevenwaters, #1))
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I don't know you. The only thing I know about you is, you're reading this. I don't know if your happy or not; I don't know whether you're young or not. I sort of hope you're young and sad. If you're old and happy, I can imagine that you'll smile to yourself when you hear me going, he broke my heart. You'll remember someone who broke your heart, and you'll think to yourself, Oh yes, i remember how that feels. But you can't, you smug old git. Oh you'll remember feeling sort of plesantly sad. You might remember listening to music and eating chocolates in your room, or walking along the embankment on your own, wrapped up in a winter coat and feeling lonely and brave. But can you remember how with every mouthful of food it felt like you were biting into your own stomach? Can you remember the taste of red wine as it came back up and into the toilet bowl? Can you remember dreaming every night that you were still together, that he was talking to you gently and touching you, so that every morning when you woke up you had to go through it all over again?
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Nick Hornby (A Long Way Down)
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Ten little Indian boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine.
Nine little Indian boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight.
Eight little Indian boys travelling in Devon; One said he'd stay there and then there were seven.
Seven little Indian boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in halves and then there were six.
Six little Indian boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five.
Five little Indian boys going in for law; One got in Chancery and then there were four.
Four little Indian boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.
Three little Indian boys walking in the Zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two.
Two little Indian boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was one.
One little Indian boy left all alone; He went and hanged himself and then there were none.
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Agatha Christie (And Then There Were None)
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The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.
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Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
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Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. So accept madness too. Let the light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you. Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life...If you want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness, since it makes up such a great part of your nature...Be glad that you can recognize it, for you will thus avoid becoming its victim. Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life.
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C.G. Jung (The Red Book: A Reader's Edition)
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It is also then that I wish I believed in some sort of life after life, that in another universe, maybe on a small red planet where we have not legs but tails, where we paddle through the atmosphere like seals, where the air itself is sustenance, composed of trillions of molecules of protein and sugar and all one has to do is open one's mouth and inhale in order to remain alive and healthy, maybe you two are there together, floating through the climate. Or maybe he is closer still: maybe he is that gray cat that has begun to sit outside our neighbor's house, purring when I reach out my hand to it; maybe he is that new puppy I see tugging at the end of my other neighbor's leash; maybe he is that toddler I saw running through the square a few months ago, shrieking with joy, his parents huffing after him; maybe he is that flower that suddenly bloomed on the rhododendron bush I thought had died long ago; maybe he is that cloud, that wave, that rain, that mist. It isn't only that he died, or how he died; it is what he died believing. And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.
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Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
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Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
ββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββand dress them in warm clothes again.
ββββββββββHow it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running
until they forget that they are horses.
ββββββββββββββββββββItβs not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
ββββββββββitβs more like a song on a policemanβs radio,
ββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββhow we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
ββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββto slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means itβs noon, that means
ββββββββββwe're inconsolable.
ββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββTell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
ββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββTell me weβll never get used to it.
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Richard Siken (Crush)
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Yes,β I whisper. The red blinking light on one of the cameras catches my eye. I know Iβm being recorded. βYes,β I say more forcefully. Everyone is drawing away from meβGale, Cressida, the insectsβgiving me the stage. But I stay focused on the red light. βI want to tell the rebels that I am alive. That Iβm right here in District Eight, where the Capitol has just bombed a hospital full of unarmed men, women, and children. There will be no survivors.β The shock Iβve been feeling begins to give way to fury. βI want to tell people that if you think for one second the Capitol will treat us fairly if thereβs a cease-fire, youβre deluding yourself. Because you know who they are and what they do.β My hands go out automatically, as if to indicate the whole horror around me. βThis is what they do! And we must fight back!β
Iβm moving in toward the camera now, carried forward by my rage. βPresident Snow says heβs sending us a message? Well, I have one for him. You can torture us and bomb us and burn our districts to the ground, but do you see that?β One of the cameras follows as I point to the planes burning on the roof of the warehouse across from us. The Capitol seal on a wing glows clearly through the flames. βFire is catching!β I am shouting now, determined that he will not miss a word. βAnd if we burn, you burn with us!
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Suzanne Collins (Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3))
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And I want to play hide-and-seek and give you my clothes and tell you I like your shoes and sit on the steps while you take a bath and massage your neck and kiss your feet and hold your hand and go for a meal and not mind when you eat my food and meet you at Rudy's and talk about the day and type up your letters and carry your boxes and laugh at your paranoia and give you tapes you don't listen to and watch great films and watch terrible films and complain about the radio and take pictures of you when you're sleeping and get up to fetch you coffee and bagels and Danish and go to Florent and drink coffee at midnight and have you steal my cigarettes and never be able to find a match and tell you about the tv programme I saw the night before and take you to the eye hospital and not laugh at your jokes and want you in the morning but let you sleep for a while and kiss your back and stroke your skin and tell you how much I love your hair your eyes your lips your neck your breasts your arse your
and sit on the steps smoking till your neighbour comes home and sit on the steps smoking till you come home and worry when you're late and be amazed when you're early and give you sunflowers and go to your party and dance till I'm black and be sorry when I'm wrong and happy when you forgive me and look at your photos and wish I'd known you forever and hear your voice in my ear and feel your skin on my skin and get scared when you're angry and your eye has gone red and the other eye blue and your hair to the left and your face oriental and tell you you're gorgeous and hug you when you're anxious and hold you when you hurt and want you when I smell you and offend you when I touch you and whimper when I'm next to you and whimper when I'm not and dribble on your breast and smother you in the night and get cold when you take the blanket and hot when you don't and melt when you smile and dissolve when you laugh and not understand why you think I'm rejecting you when I'm not rejecting you and wonder how you could think I'd ever reject you and wonder who you are but accept you anyway and tell you about the tree angel enchanted forest boy who flew across the ocean because he loved you and write poems for you and wonder why you don't believe me and have a feeling so deep I can't find words for it and want to buy you a kitten I'd get jealous of because it would get more attention than me and keep you in bed when you have to go and cry like a baby when you finally do and get rid of the roaches and buy you presents you don't want and take them away again and ask you to marry me and you say no again but keep on asking because though you think I don't mean it I do always have from the first time I asked you and wander the city thinking it's empty without you and want what you want and think I'm losing myself but know I'm safe with you and tell you the worst of me and try to give you the best of me because you don't deserve any less and answer your questions when I'd rather not and tell you the truth when I really don't want to and try to be honest because I know you prefer it and think it's all over but hang on in for just ten more minutes before you throw me out of your life and forget who I am and try to get closer to you because it's beautiful learning to know you and well worth the effort and speak German to you badly and Hebrew to you worse and make love with you at three in the morning and somehow somehow somehow communicate some of the overwhelming undying overpowering unconditional all-encompassing heart-enriching mind-expanding on-going never-ending love I have for you.
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Sarah Kane (Crave)
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Some catastrophic moments invite clarity, explode in split moments: You smash your hand through a windowpane and then there is blood and shattered glass stained with red all over the place; you fall out a window and break some bones and scrape some skin. Stitches and casts and bandages and antiseptic solve and salve the wounds. But depression is not a sudden disaster. It is more like a cancer: At first its tumorous mass is not even noticeable to the careful eye, and then one day -- wham! -- there is a huge, deadly seven-pound lump lodged in your brain or your stomach or your shoulder blade, and this thing that your own body has produced is actually trying to kill you. Depression is a lot like that: Slowly, over the years, the data will accumulate in your heart and mind, a computer program for total negativity will build into your system, making life feel more and more unbearable. But you won't even notice it coming on, thinking that it is somehow normal, something about getting older, about turning eight or turning twelve or turning fifteen, and then one day you realize that your entire life is just awful, not worth living, a horror and a black blot on the white terrain of human existence. One morning you wake up afraid you are going to live.
In my case, I was not frightened in the least bit at the thought that I might live because I was certain, quite certain, that I was already dead. The actual dying part, the withering away of my physical body, was a mere formality. My spirit, my emotional being, whatever you want to call all that inner turmoil that has nothing to do with physical existence, were long gone, dead and gone, and only a mass of the most fucking god-awful excruciating pain like a pair of boiling hot tongs clamped tight around my spine and pressing on all my nerves was left in its wake.
That's the thing I want to make clear about depression: It's got nothing at all to do with life. In the course of life, there is sadness and pain and sorrow, all of which, in their right time and season, are normal -- unpleasant, but normal. Depression is an altogether different zone because it involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature's part (nature, after all, abhors a vacuum) to fill up the empty space. But for all intents and purposes, the deeply depressed are just the walking, waking dead.
And the scariest part is that if you ask anyone in the throes of depression how he got there, to pin down the turning point, he'll never know. There is a classic moment in The Sun Also Rises when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt, and all he can say in response is, 'Gradually and then suddenly.' When someone asks how I love my mind, that is all I can say too
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Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)