“
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!
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (The Lord of the Rings, #0))
“
I have heard that men who live by a waterfall cease to hear it—in such a way did I learn to live beside the rushing torrent if his doom.
”
”
Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
“
The leaves were long, the grass was green,
The hemlock-umbels tall and fair,
And in the glade a light was seen
Of stars in shadow shimmering.
Tinuviel was dancing there
To music of a pipe unseen,
And light of stars was in her hair,
And in her raiment glimmering.
There Beren came from mountains cold,
And lost he wandered under leaves,
And where the Elven-river rolled.
He walked along and sorrowing.
He peered between the hemlock-leaves
And saw in wonder flowers of gold
Upon her mantle and her sleeves,
And her hair like shadow following.
Enchantment healed his weary feet
That over hills were doomed to roam;
And forth he hastened, strong and fleet,
And grasped at moonbeams glistening.
Through woven woods in Elvenhome
She lightly fled on dancing feet,
And left him lonely still to roam
In the silent forest listening.
He heard there oft the flying sound
Of feet as light as linden-leaves,
Or music welling underground,
In hidden hollows quavering.
Now withered lay the hemlock-sheaves,
And one by one with sighing sound
Whispering fell the beechen leaves
In the wintry woodland wavering.
He sought her ever, wandering far
Where leaves of years were thickly strewn,
By light of moon and ray of star
In frosty heavens shivering.
Her mantle glinted in the moon,
As on a hill-top high and far
She danced, and at her feet was strewn
A mist of silver quivering.
When winter passed, she came again,
And her song released the sudden spring,
Like rising lark, and falling rain,
And melting water bubbling.
He saw the elven-flowers spring
About her feet, and healed again
He longed by her to dance and sing
Upon the grass untroubling.
Again she fled, but swift he came.
Tinuviel! Tinuviel!
He called her by her elvish name;
And there she halted listening.
One moment stood she, and a spell
His voice laid on her: Beren came,
And doom fell on Tinuviel
That in his arms lay glistening.
As Beren looked into her eyes
Within the shadows of her hair,
The trembling starlight of the skies
He saw there mirrored shimmering.
Tinuviel the elven-fair,
Immortal maiden elven-wise,
About him cast her shadowy hair
And arms like silver glimmering.
Long was the way that fate them bore,
O'er stony mountains cold and grey,
Through halls of iron and darkling door,
And woods of nightshade morrowless.
The Sundering Seas between them lay,
And yet at last they met once more,
And long ago they passed away
In the forest singing sorrowless.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings)
“
From the window, above the clatter of pots and the slamming of cabinets, Francis was singing, as though it was the happiest song in the world: 'We are the little black sheep who have gone astray . . . Baa baa baa . . . Gentlemen songsters off on a spree . . . Doomed from here to eternity . . .
”
”
Donna Tartt (The Secret History)
“
Of course, it is likely enough, my friends,' he said slowly, 'likely enough that we are going to our doom: the last march of the Ents. But if we stayed home and did nothing, doom would find us anyway, sooner or later. That thought has long been growing in our hearts; and that is why we are marching now. It was not a hasty resolve. Now at least the last march of the Ents may be worth a song.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, #2))
“
FURIES:
Over the beast doomed to the fire
this is the chant, scatter of wits,
frenzy and fear, hurting the heart,
song of the Furies
binding brain and blighting blood
in its stringless melody.
”
”
Aeschylus (The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides)
“
You doom yourselves, Susannah. You seem positively bent on it, and the root is always the same: your faith fails you, and you replace it with rational thought. But there is no love in thought, nothing that lasts in deduction, only death in rationalism.
”
”
Stephen King (Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower, #6))
“
These are bad times for people who like to sit outside the library at dawn on a rainy morning and get ripped to the tits on crank and powerful music.
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream)
“
I have heard that men who live by a waterfall cease to hear it—in such a way did I learn to live beside the rushing torrent of his doom.
”
”
Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
“
That summer, Titanic fever gripped Kabul. People smuggled pirated copies of the film from Pakistan- sometimes in their underwear. After curfew, everyone locked their doors, turned out the lights, turned down the volume, and reaped tears for Jack and Rose and the passengers of the doomed ship. If there was electrical power, Mariam, Laila, and the children watched it too. A dozen times or more, they unearthed the TV from behind the tool-shed, late at night, with the lights out and quilts pinned over the windows.
At the Kabul River, vendors moved into the parched riverbed. Soon, from the river's sunbaked hollows, it was possible to buy Titanic carpets, and Titanic cloth, from bolts arranged in wheelbarrows. There was Titanic deodorant, Titanic toothpaste, Titanic perfume, Titanic pakora, even Titanic burqas. A particularly persistent beggar began calling himself "Titanic Beggar."
"Titanic City" was born.
It's the song, they said.
No, the sea. The luxury. The ship.
It's the sex, they whispered.
Leo, said Aziza sheepishly. It's all about Leo.
"Everybody wants Jack," Laila said to Mariam. "That's what it is. Everybody wants Jack to rescue them from disaster. But there is no Jack. Jack is not coming back. Jack is dead.
”
”
Khaled Hosseini (A Thousand Splendid Suns)
“
Not so on Man; him through their malice fall'n,
Father of Mercy and Grace, thou didst not doom
So strictly, but much more to pity incline:
No sooner did thy dear and only Son
Perceive thee purpos'd not to doom frail Man
So strictly, but much more to pity inclin'd,
He to appease thy wrath, and end the strife
Of mercy and Justice in thy face discern'd,
Regardless of the Bliss wherein hee sat
Second to thee, offer'd himself to die
For man's offence. O unexampl'd love,
Love nowhere to be found less than Divine!
Hail Son of God, Saviour of Men, thy Name
Shall be the copious matter of my Song
Henceforth, and never shall my Harp thy praise
Forget, nor from thy Father's praise disjoin.
”
”
John Milton (Paradise Lost)
“
I remember being stunned at the New York skyline as I drove over this big freeway, coming across the flats in Seacaucus. All of a sudden it was looming up in front of me and I almost lost control of the car. I thought it was a vision.
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream)
“
also in the boom of the big bell there is a quaintness of tone which wakens feelings, so strangely far-away from all the nineteenth-century part of me, that the faint blind stirrings of them make me afraid, - deliciously afraid. never do I hear that billowing peal but I become aware of a striving and a fluttering in the abyssal part of my ghost, - a sensation as of memories struggling to reach the light beyond the obscurations of a million million deaths and births. I hope to remain within hearing of that bell... and, considering the possibility of being doomed to the state of a jiki-ketsu-geki, I want to have my chance of being reborn in some bamboo flower-cup, or mizutame, whence I might issue softly, singing my thin and pungent song, to bite some people that I know.
”
”
Lafcadio Hearn (Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things)
“
Can I get to the bottle of Old Crow and mix it up with the remains of these ice fragments...a cool drink for the freak? Give the gentleman something cool, dear, can't you see he's wired his brain to the water pump and his ears to the generator...
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream)
“
Considering the possibility of being doomed to the state of a Jiki-ketsu-gaki, I want to have my chance of being reborn in some bamboo flower-cup, or mizutame, whence I might issue softly, singing my thin and pungent song, to bite some people that I know.
”
”
Lafcadio Hearn
“
A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Mark the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spelling words
Armed for slaughter.
The rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.
Across the wall of the world,
A river sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.
Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.
Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I
And the tree and stone were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow
And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.
The river sings and sings on.
There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing river and the wise rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the tree.
Today, the first and last of every tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river.
Each of you, descendant of some passed on
Traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name,
You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca,
You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me,
Then forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of other seekers--
Desperate for gain, starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot...
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru,
Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am the tree planted by the river,
Which will not be moved.
I, the rock, I the river, I the tree
I am yours--your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage,
Need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me,
The rock, the river, the tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes,
Into your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.
”
”
Maya Angelou
“
We have sworn, and not lightly. This oath we will keep. We are threatened with many evils, and treason not least; but one thing is not said: that we shall suffer from cowardice, from cravens or the fear of cravens. Therefore I say that we will go on, and this doom I add: the deeds that we shall do shall be the matter of song until the last days of Arda.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Silmarillion)
“
I suspect it is simply a feature of being an adult, what I will call being grown, or a grown person, to have endured some variety of thorough emotional turmoil, to have made your way to the brink, and, if you’re lucky, to have stepped back from it—if not permanently, then for some time, or time to time. Then it is, too, a kind of grownness by which I see three squares of light on my wall, the shadow of a tree trembling in two of them, and hear the train going by and feel no panic or despair, feel no sense of condemnation or doom or horrible align- ment, but simply observe the signs—light and song—for what they are—light and song. And, knowing what I have felt before, and might feel again, feel a sense of relief, which is cousin to, or rather, water to, delight.
”
”
Ross Gay (The Book of Delights: Essays)
“
I love the thrill of impending, weightless doom, so I built something to give me those feelings all the time.' As he stands, hands on hips, nodding at the Blue Flash, I think about impeding, weightless doom. It's a phrase I like and understand. I tuck it away in the corner of my mind to pull out later, maybe for a song. I say, 'You may be the most brilliant man I have ever met.' I like the idea of something that can give you those feelings all the time. I want something like that, and then I look at Violet and think: There she is.
”
”
Jennifer Niven (All the Bright Places)
“
I was thinking; my mind was running at top speed, scanning and sorting my options. They ranged all the way from Dumb and Dangerous to Crazy, Evil, and utterly wrong from the start.
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream)
“
Don’t say that,” I snapped. “We are innocent men! We are working within the system . . . and besides, I think I have some good crank outside in the car.
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream)
“
Early on a difficult climb, especially a difficult solo climb, you constantly feel the abyss pulling at your back. To resist takes a tremendous conscious effort; you don’t dare let your guard down for an instant. The siren song of the void puts you on edge; it makes your movements tentative, clumsy, herky-jerky. But as the climb goes on, you grow accustomed to the exposure, you get used to rubbing shoulders with doom, you come to believe in the reliability of your hands and feet and head. You learn to trust your self-control. By and by your attention becomes so intensely focused that you no longer notice the raw knuckles, the cramping thighs, the strain of maintaining nonstop concentration. A trancelike state settles over your efforts; the climb becomes a clear-eyed dream. Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence—the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes—all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and by the seriousness of the task at hand.
”
”
Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild)
“
During the night a fine, delicate summer rain had washed the plains, leaving the morning sky crisp and clean. The sun shone warm—soon to bake the earth dry. It cast a purple haze across the plain—like a great, dark topaz. In the trees the birds sang, while the squirrels jumped from branch to branch in seeming good will, belying the expected tension of the coming days.
”
”
Cate Campbell Beatty (Donor 23)
“
They held each other close and turned their backs upon the end.
The hills that split asunder and the black that ate the skies;
The flames that shot so high and hot that even dragons burned;
Would never be the final sights that fell upon their eyes.
A fly upon a wall, the waves the sea wind whipped and churned —
The city of a thousand years, and all that men had learned;
The Doom consumed it all alike, and neither of them turned"
―Tyrion Lannister and Jorah Mormont, quoting a poem about the Doom
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1))
“
Blow on, ye death fraught whirlwinds! blow,
Around the rocks, and rifted caves;
Ye demons of the gulf below!
I hear you, in the troubled waves.
High on this cliff, which darkness shrouds
In night's impenetrable clouds,
My solitary watch I keep,
And listen, while the turbid deep
Groans to the raging tempests, as they roll
Their desolating force, to thunder at the pole.
Eternal world of waters, hail!
Within thy caves my Lover lies;
And day and night alike shall fail
Ere slumber lock my streaming eyes.
Along this wild untrodden coast,
Heap'd by the gelid' hand of frost;
Thro' this unbounded waste of seas,
Where never sigh'd the vernal breeze;
Mine was the choice, in this terrific form,
To brave the icy surge, to shiver in the storm.
Yes! I am chang'd - My heart, my soul,
Retain no more their former glow.
Hence, ere the black'ning tempests roll,
I watch the bark, in murmurs low,
(While darker low'rs the thick'ning' gloom)
To lure the sailor to his doom;
Soft from some pile of frozen snow
I pour the syren-song of woe;
Like the sad mariner's expiring cry,
As, faint and worn with toil, he lays him down to die.
Then, while the dark and angry deep
Hangs his huge billows high in air ;
And the wild wind with awful sweep,
Howls in each fitful swell - beware!
Firm on the rent and crashing mast,
I lend new fury to the blast;
I mark each hardy cheek grow pale,
And the proud sons of courage fail;
Till the torn vessel drinks the surging waves,
Yawns the disparted main, and opes its shelving graves.
When Vengeance bears along the wave
The spell, which heav'n and earth appals;
Alone, by night, in darksome cave,
On me the gifted wizard calls.
Above the ocean's boiling flood
Thro' vapour glares the moon in blood:
Low sounds along the waters die,
And shrieks of anguish fill the' sky;
Convulsive powers the solid rocks divide,
While, o'er the heaving surge, the embodied spirits glide.
Thrice welcome to my weary sight,
Avenging ministers of Wrath!
Ye heard, amid the realms of night,
The spell that wakes the sleep of death.
Where Hecla's flames the snows dissolve,
Or storms, the polar skies involve;
Where, o'er the tempest-beaten wreck,
The raging winds and billows break;
On the sad earth, and in the stormy sea,
All, all shall shudd'ring own your potent agency.
To aid your toils, to scatter death,
Swift, as the sheeted lightning's force,
When the keen north-wind's freezing breath
Spreads desolation in its course,
My soul within this icy sea,
Fulfils her fearful destiny.
Thro' Time's long ages I shall wait
To lead the victims to their fate;
With callous heart, to hidden rocks decoy,
And lure, in seraph-strains, unpitying, to destroy.
”
”
Anne Bannerman (Poems by Anne Bannerman.)
“
And Breeze knew that what you haven’t reckoned with, you’re doomed to repeat. America was a ghost story with no end.
”
”
Tia Williams (A Love Song for Ricki Wilde)
“
I never knew and never will whether either Cassie or I was a great detective, though I suspect not, but I know this: we made a team worthy of bard-songs and history books. This was our last and greatest dance together, danced in a tiny interview room with darkness outside and rain falling soft and relentless on the roof, for no audience but the doomed and the dead.
”
”
Tana French (In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1))
“
In short, Daniel was once again a member of a family. Viewed from without they were a strange enough family: a rattling, hunchbacked old woman, a spoiled senile cocker spaniel, and a eunuch with a punctured career (for though Rey didn’t live with them, his off-stage presence was as abiding and palpable as that of any paterfamilias away every day at the office). And Daniel himself. But better to be strange together than strange apart. He was glad to have found such a haven at last, and he hoped that most familial and doomed of hopes, that nothing would change.
”
”
Thomas M. Disch (On Wings of Song)
“
Sirs, I am but a nameless man,
A rhymester without a home,
Yet since I come of the Wessex clay
And carry the cross of Rome,
I will even answer the mighty earl
That asked of Wessex men
Why they be meek and monkish folk,
And bow to the White Lord's broken yoke;
What sign have we save blood and smoke?
Here is my answer then.
That on you is fallen the shadow,
And not upon the Name;
That though we scatter and though we fly,
And you hang over us like the sky,
You are more tired of victory,
Than we are tired of shame.
That though you hunt the Christian man
Like a hare on the hill-side,
The hare has still more heart to run
Than you have heart to ride.
That though all lances split on you,
All swords be heaved in vain,
We have more lust again to lose
Than you to win again.
Your lord sits high in the saddle,
A broken-hearted king,
But our king Alfred, lost from fame,
Fallen among foes or bonds of shame,
In I know not what mean trade or name,
Has still some song to sing.
Our monks go robed in rain and snow,
But the heart of flame therein,
But you go clothed in feasts and flames,
When all is ice within;
Nor shall all iron dooms make dumb
Men wandering ceaselessly,
If it be not better to fast for joy
Than feast for misery.
Nor monkish order only
Slides down, as field to fen,
All things achieved and chosen pass,
As the White Horse fades in the grass,
No work of Christian men.
Ere the sad gods that made your gods
Saw their sad sunrise pass,
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale,
That you have left to darken and fail,
Was cut out of the grass.
Therefore your end is on you,
Is on you and your kings,
Not for a fire in Ely fen,
Not that your gods are nine or ten,
But because it is only Christian men
Guard even heathen things.
For our God hath blessed creation,
Calling it good. I know
What spirit with whom you blindly band
Hath blessed destruction with his hand;
Yet by God's death the stars shall stand
And the small apples grow.
”
”
G.K. Chesterton (The Ballad of the White Horse)
“
I'm not engineer educated, but I am an adrenaline junkie. Demolition derbies, drag racing, driving fast--when I gave them up, I tried to think of something I could do to replace them, something that would give me that rush. I love the thrill of impending, weightless doom, so I built something to give me those feelings all the time."
As he stands, hands on hips, nodding at the Blue Flash, I think about impending, weightless doom. It's a phrase I like and understand. I tuck it away in the corner of my mind to pull out later, maybe for a song.
I say, "You may be the most brilliant man I have ever met." I like the idea of something that can give you those feelings all the time. I want something like that, and then I look at Violet and think: .
”
”
Jennifer Niven (All the Bright Places)
“
Oh, my love, I say goodbye For what the sea did do. She tipped the bow, and split the stern And ran me through and through. Hate her not for what she does, For she’s a jealous lot. The sea has taken what is hers And only what she ought. A sailor’s doom is waiting A’deep beneath the waves Where man and ship become as one And share their final graves. Do not weep for me, oh sweet, I rest where I belong. But in the whispers of the sea, My love, you’ll hear my song.
”
”
Kathryn Ann Kingsley (The Unseelie Prince (Maze of Shadows, #1))
“
Anything well done has the feeling of death to me, of being finished. I don't want to "master" anything. I want to spy, and sneak, and capture things just as they are . . . record all that comes before and after the song—jokes and fights and private moments.
Having an unfillable hole inside is a great catalyst. You're always trying new things to fill it. People with holes look good! Look ready for action. But then sometimes you're home alone, and there's nothing new to try, and the hole's still there. "Hey," it growls, poking you from inside, "I'm hungry." I get tired of it!
We are like two living cells inside a just-dead body—doomed, terrified.
She argues herself out of anything she's working on, halfway through. As I stand there in the downpour and pull the mailbox open and drop my letter down the hole, I think about how Cindy is more beautiful, intelligent, and intricate than me, but still I have the winning point: whatever I do, even when I'm wrong, I go all the way.
It's dark humor, but it's rooted in something real. What you present to the world is light humor. You keep it fun and fast-paced. No one can relate to that long-term. Struggle is what makes life rich—not success.
”
”
Lisa Crystal Carver (Drugs are Nice: A Post-Punk Memoir)
“
Renly offered me a peach. At our parley. Mocked me, defied me, threatened me, and offered me a peach. I thought he was drawing a blade and went for mine own. Was that his purpose, to make me show fear? Or was it one of his pointless jests? When he spoke of how sweet the peach was, did his words have some hidden meaning?" The king gave a shake of his head, like a dog shaking a rabbit to snap its neck. "Only Renly could vex me so with a piece of fruit. He brought his doom on himself with his treason, but I did love him, Davos. I know that now. I swear, I will go to my grave thinking of my brother's peach.
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2))
“
I didn't enjoy being a snake, and yet I appear to be doomed to be reminded of it for all eternity,' Cardan was saying, black curls falling across his face. He held a three-pronged fork aloft, as though to emphasise his point. 'The excess of songs hasn't helped, nor has their longevity. It's been what? Eight years? Nine? Truly, the celebratory air about the whole business has been excessive. You'd think I never did a more popular thing than sit in the dark on a throne and bite people who annoyed me. I could have always done that. I could do that now.'
'Bite people?' echoed Jude from the other end of the table.
Cardan grinned at her. 'Yes, if that's what they like.' He snapped his teeth at the air as though to demonstrate.
'No one is interested in that,' Jude said, shaking her head.
”
”
Holly Black (The Prisoner’s Throne (The Stolen Heir Duology, #2))
“
Mia shrugged. “You doom yourselves, Susannah. You seem positively bent on it, and the root is always the same: your faith fails you, and you replace it with rational thought. But there is no love in thought, nothing that lasts in deduction, only death in rationalism.
”
”
Stephen King (Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower, #6))
“
The world has its own ways of treating us like what we will never be, but want to be. It relinquishes its grip on our souls while lulling us with the songs of freedom and conquest of beauty. It magnifies every tiny bit of something useless over an unfathomable presence of humanity. And we all waste the whole of our lives standing in queue for gaining its attention to be abdicated as if we never existed in the eyes of our fellow men.
”
”
Annie Ali
“
They were both heavier than I remembered, as if their sadness had materialized into solid weights onto their shoulders, but it is true that what humans call intergenerational trauma has always been heavy, sinking to the gloomy abyss of repressed memory to be mined for so-called wisdom later. I was newly aware my parents were people who carried their burdens on their bodies rather than within themselves—this was my doomed inheritance.
”
”
Jade Song (Chlorine)
“
Stand like a beaten anvil, when thy dream
Is laid upon thee, golden from the fire.
Flinch not, though heavily through that furnace-gleam
The black forge-hammers fall on thy desire.
Demoniac giants round thee seem to loom.
'Tis but the world-smiths heaving to and fro.
Stand like a beaten anvil. Take the doom
Their ponderous weapons deal thee, blow on blow.
Needful to truth as dew-fall to the flower
Is this wild wrath and this implacable scorn.
For every pang, new beauty, and new power,
Burning blood-red shall on thy heart be born.
Stand like a beaten anvil. Let earth's wrong
Beat on that iron and ring back in song.
”
”
Alfred Noyes (Collected Poems Complete)
“
Hold fast
To the law
Of the last
Cold tome,
Where the earth
Of the truth
Lies thick
On the page,
And the loam
Of faith
In the ink
Long fled
From the drone
Of the nib
Flows on
Through the breath
Of the bone
Reborn
In a dawn
Of doom
Where blooms
The rose
For the winds
The child
For the tomb
The thrush
For the hush
Of song,
The corn
For the scythe
And the thorn
In wait
For the heart
Till the last
Of the first
Depart,
And the least
Of the past
Is dust
And the dust
Is lost.
Hold fast!
”
”
Mervyn Peake (Gormenghast (Gormenghast, #2))
“
I have heard that men who live by a waterfall cease to hear it-in such way did I learn to live beside the rushing torrent of his doom
”
”
Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
“
Animals don't hire lawyers
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream)
“
I ask for a decree
dooming my bitter enemies to laughter
advanced against them.
”
”
John Berryman (The Dream Songs)
“
Woman’s power wanes, but nothing ever passes except to wax again. . . . And if men become tyrants, they shape for themselves the doom of tyrants, who are always betrayed.
”
”
Evangeline Walton (The Mabinogion Tetralogy: The Prince of Annwn, The Children of Llyr, The Song of Rhiannon, The Island of the Mighty)
“
We are going to Court, Andrew. We are champions! We will crush them like cheap roaches! TODAY’S PIG IS TOMORROW’S BACON!
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream)
“
Once I broke him out of jail, as it were, I would be responsible for him until my lawyers took over.
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream)
“
He definitely had a feel for words, almost like an idiot-savant.
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream)
“
A Faery Song
Sung by the people of Faery over Diarmuid and Grania, in their bridal sleep under a Cromlech.
We who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told:
Give to these children, new from the world,
Silence and love;
And the long dew-dropping hours of the night,
And the stars above:
Give to these children, new from the world,
Rest far from men.
Is anything better, anything better?
Tell us it then:
Us who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told.
”
”
W.B. Yeats (The Rose)
“
But even I could not fill each minute with fear. I have heard that men who live near a waterfall cease to hear it - in such a way did I learn to live beside the rushing torrent of his doom.
”
”
Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
“
Early on a difficult climb, especially a difficult solo climb, you're hyperaware of the abyss pulling at your back. You constantly feel its call, its immense hunger. To resist takes a tremendous conscious effort; you don't dare let your guard down for an instant. The siren song of the void puts you on edge, it makes your movements tentative, clumsy, herky-jerky. Bus as the climb goes on, you grow accustomed to the exposure, you get used to rubbing shoulders with doom, you come to believe in the reliability of your hands and feet and head. You learn to trust your self-control.
”
”
Jon Krakauer (Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains)
“
Prayers For Rain' begins like practically every Cure song, with an introduction that's longer than most Bo Diddley singles. Never mind the omnipresent chill, why does Robert Smith write such interminable intros? I can put on 'Prayers For Rain,' then cook an omelette in the time it takes him to start singing. He seems to have a rule that the creepier the song, the longer the wait before it actually starts. I'm not sure if Smith spends the intro time applying eye-liner or manually reducing his serotonin level, but one must endure a lot of doom-filled guitar patterns, cathedral-reverb drums and modal string synth wanderings during the opening of 'Prayers for Rain.
”
”
Tom Reynolds (I Hate Myself and Want to Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You've Ever Heard)
“
It was a strange time. Over us, every second, hung the terror of Schilles' destiny, while the murmurs of war among the gods grew louder. But even I could not fill each minute with fear. I have heard that men who live by a waterfall cease to hear it-in such a way did I learn to live beside the rushing torrent of his doom. The days passed, and he lived. The months passed, and I could go a whole day without looking over the precipice of his death. The miracle of a year, then two.
”
”
Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
“
Early on a difficult climb, especially a difficult solo climb, you constantly feel the abyss pulling at your back. To resist takes a tremendous conscious effort; you don't dare let your guard down for an instant. The siren song of the void puts you on edge; it makes your movements tentative, clumsy, herky-jerky. But as the climb goes on, you grow accustomed to the exposure, you get used to rubbing shoulders with doom, you come to believe in the reliability of your hands and feet and head. You learn to trust your self-control. By and by your attention becomes so intensely focused that you no longer notice the raw knuckles, the cramping thighs, the strain of maintaining nonstop concentration. A trancelike state settles over your efforts; the climb becomes a clear-eyed dream. Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence — the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes — all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and by the seriousness of the task at hand. At such moments something resembling happiness actually stirs in your chest, but it isn't the sort of emotion you want to lean on very hard. In solo climbing the whole enterprise is held together with little more than chutzpah, not the most reliable adhesive.
”
”
Jon Krakauer
“
Now the world runs on swiftly to great tidings. And one of men, even of Beor's house, shall indeed come, and the Girdle of Melian shall not restrain him, for doom greater than my power shall send him; and the songs that shall spring from that coming shall endure when all Middle-earth is changed
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Silmarillion)
“
I have heard that men who live by a waterfall cease to hear it - in such a way did I learn to live beside the rushing torrent of his doom. The days passed, and he lived. The months passed, and I could go a whole day without looking over the precipice of his death. The miracle of a year, then two.
”
”
Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
“
Relly fired off the opening riff. Butt laid down the beat, old doom and new joy mixed together. "I wait till I, like fire, shall rise," Jerod sang. And then again, louder, wailing sure and true.
I was the last one to join in. I had a bass line all wroked out, of course. I'd been waiting weeks for this momment. My fingers colosed on the strings, pressed them hard to the frets. Butt and Relly were locked in, repeating the four-bar intro. Louder and louder, fierce as a war cry.
"Ok," I whispered into the pounding noise.
I joined in, doubling Relly at first, then splitting off to coil our riffs together. It was great, it was huge, it was endless. The song rose, churning and sucking everything in like a cyclone.
"The will my voice in great goodbyes," Jerod screamed from the speakers. "Join to the chorus of the skies."
Silence was inside me, riding the Ghost Metal tornado. Right at the center, at the heart of the song.
I didn't need a voice. I had a bass. I didn't need to hear myself talk or sing. Jerod could make the words for me.
Or maybe it was Silence herself, pouring out through the PA system. Either way, any way, They were my words. And all the world would hear them.
”
”
Leander Watts (Beautiful City of the Dead)
“
Pan, Echo, and the Satyr
From the Greek of Moschus
Published (without title) by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. There is a draft amongst the Hunt manuscripts.
Pan loved his neighbour Echo—but that child
Of Earth and Air pined for the Satyr leaping;
The Satyr loved with wasting madness wild
The bright nymph Lyda,—and so three went weeping.
As Pan loved Echo, Echo loved the Satyr,
The Satyr, Lyda; and so love consumed them.—
And thus to each—which was a woful matter—
To bear what they inflicted Justice doomed them;
For, inasmuch as each might hate the lover,
Each, loving, so was hated.—Ye that love not
Be warned—in thought turn this example over,
That when ye love, the like return ye prove not.
NOTE:
_6 so Hunt manuscript; thus 1824.
_11 So 1824; This lesson timely in your thoughts turn over, The moral of
this song in thought turn over (as alternatives) Hunt manuscript.
”
”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley)
“
And so we weep for the fallen. We weep for those yet to fall, and in war the screams are loud and harsh and in peace the wail is so drawn-out we tell ourselves we hear nothing.
And so this music is a lament, and I am doomed to hear its bittersweet notes for a lifetime.
Show me a god that does not demand mortal suffering.
Show me a god that celebrates diversity, a celebration that embraces even non-believers and is not threatened by them.
Show me a god who understands the meaning of peace. In life, not in death.
Show—
'Stop,' Gesler said in a grating voice.
Blinking, Fiddler lowered the instrument. 'What?'
'You cannot end with such anger, Fid. Please.'
Anger? I am sorry. He would have spoken that aloud, but suddenly he could not. His gaze lowered, and he found himself studying the littered floor at his feet. Someone, in passing – perhaps Fiddler himself – had inadvertently stepped on a cockroach. Half-crushed, smeared into the warped wood, its legs kicked feebly. He stared at it in fascination.
Dear creature, do you now curse an indifferent god?
'You're right,' he said. 'I can't end it there.' He raised the fiddle again. 'Here's a different song for you, one of the few I've actually learned. From Kartool. It's called "The Paralt's Dance".' He rested the bow on the strings, then began.
Wild, frantic, amusing. Its final notes recounted the triumphant female eating her lover. And even without words, the details of that closing flourish could not be mistaken.
The four men laughed.
Then fell silent once more.
”
”
Steven Erikson (The Bonehunters (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #6))
“
But even I could not fill each minute with fear. I have heard that men who live by a waterfall cease to hear it—in such a way did I learn to live beside the rushing torrent of his doom. The days passed, and he lived. Two months passed, and I could go a whole day without looking over the precipice of his death.
”
”
Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
“
I turn my head a little. The radio's caroling "Tonight," velvety smooth and young and filled with plaintive desire. Maria's song from West Side Story. I remember one beautiful night long ago at the Winter Garden, with a beautiful someone beside me. I tilt my nose and breathe in, and I can still smell her perfume, the ghost of her perfume from long ago. But where is she now, where did she go, and what did I do with her?
Our paths ran along so close together they were almost like one, the one they were eventually going to be. Thin fear came along, fear entered into it somehow, and split them wide apart.
Fear bred anxiety to justify. Anxiety to justify bred anger. The phone calls that wouldn't be answered, the door rings that wouldn't be opened. Anger bred sudden calamity.
Now there aren't two paths anymore; there's only one, only mine. Running downhill into the ground, running downhill into its doom.
("New York Blues")
”
”
Cornell Woolrich (Night and Fear: A Centenary Collection of Stories by Cornell Woolrich (Otto Penzler Book))
“
Who would attack Astapor?” Ser Jorah asked. “Meereen and Yunkai are rivals but not enemies, the Doom destroyed Valyria, the folk of the eastern hinterlands are all Ghiscari, and beyond the hills lies Lhazar. The Lamb Men, as your Dothraki call them, a notably unwarlike people.” “Yes,” she agreed, “but north of the slave cities is the Dothraki sea, and two dozen mighty khals who like nothing more than sacking cities and carrying off their people into slavery.” “Carrying them off where? What good are slaves once you’ve killed the slavers? Valyria is no more, Qarth lies beyond the red waste, and the Nine Free Cities are thousands of leagues to the west. And you may be sure the sons of the harpy give lavishly
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3))
“
I wonder if the story (though not intended as such by my aunt) is a warning for me, a preview of my own life which I thought I had fashioned so cleverly, so differently from my mother's, but which is only a repetition, in a different raga, of her tragic song. Perhaps it is like this for all daughters, doomed to choose for ourselves, over and over, the men who have destroyed our mothers.
”
”
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
“
The boxes stood there, judging her. Who came up with the names for these things? Early Pregnancy Test was fine, but First Response? What was she, a 911 call? Little cardboard soldiers of doom, ready to deliver a message from the front lines that she had lost, and it was time to surrender to the truth. Never surrender! And now she was quoting cheesy 80s songs in her mind. This was how far she had fallen.
”
”
Julia Kent (Her Two Billionaires and a Baby (Her Billionaires, #4))
“
how the great pairs of detectives know each other’s every thought as surely as lifelong ballet partners in a pas de deux. I never knew and never will whether either Cassie or I was a great detective, though I suspect not, but I know this: we made a team worthy of bard-songs and history books. This was our last and greatest dance together, danced in a tiny interview room with darkness outside and rain falling soft and relentless on the roof, for no audience but the doomed and the dead.
”
”
Tana French (In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1))
“
1) The Titanic hit the iceberg in the North Atlantic, approximately 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland. 2) The Titanic was considered unsinkable because she was built with huge watertight doors to contain any possible leaks. However, when the ship hit the iceberg, six watertight compartments quickly filled up with water, dooming the ship. 3) The signal SOS was chosen as an international distress call because of the simplicity of the three letters in Morse code: three dots, three dashes, and three dots. 4) No one knows for certain exactly how long the musicians played on the Titanic, but legend says they played until the ship went down, and their last song was the hymn “Nearer My God to Thee.” 5) More than 1,500 people perished in the Titanic disaster, while 705 people escaped in lifeboats and were eventually rescued by a ship named the Carpathia. 6) After the sinking of the Titanic, laws were changed so that every ship was required to have enough lifeboats to carryall its passengers. Also, the International Ice Patrol was formed, so that ships would have warning about ice conditions. 7) In 1985, a scientist named Dr. Robert Ballard discovered the undersea wreck of the Titanic.
”
”
Mary Pope Osborne (Tonight on the Titanic (Magic Tree House, #17))
“
Of course, it is likely enough, my friends,’ he said slowly, ‘likely enough that we are going to our doom: the last march of the Ents. But if we stayed at home and did nothing, doom would find us anyway, sooner or later. That thought has long been growing in our hearts; and that is why we are marching now. It was not a hasty resolve. Now at least the last march of the Ents may be worth a song. Aye,’ he sighed, ‘we may help the other peoples before we pass away. Still, I should have liked to see the songs come true about the Entwives. I should dearly have liked to see Fimbrethil again. But there, my friends, songs like trees bear fruit only in their own time and their own way: and sometimes they are withered untimely.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, #2))
“
Valyria. It was written that on the day of Doom every hill for five hundred miles had split asunder to fill the air with ash and smoke and fire, blazes so hot and hungry that even the dragons in the sky were engulfed and consumed. Great rents had opened in the earth, swallowing palaces, temples, entire towns. Lakes boiled or turned to acid, mountains burst, fiery fountains spewed molten rock a thousand feet into the air, red clouds rained down dragonglass and the black blood of demons, and to the north the ground splintered and collapsed and fell in on itself and an angry sea came rushing in. The proudest city in all the world was gone in an instant, its fabled empire vanished in a day, the Lands of the Long Summer scorched and drowned and blighted.
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5))
“
Thus it went on, each generation adding some flourish to the show; all men will seek honor, even victims doomed to death. It was thought nothing of, just to dodge the horns; you must make a graceful dance of it, and never look flurried or scared, but play the bull as if you loved him. And then, so Lukos says, came the golden age of the bull-dance. There was so much honor in it that the noblest and bravest of the Cretan youth did it for love, to win themselves a name and honor the god. That was the day of the first great bull-leapers; the day the songs are sung of. It is a good while back now, and the young lords and ladies have other pastimes. But sooner than lose the show, they brought in slaves to train. Even now, he says, a kind of glory sticks to a bull-dancer. They think the world of him, if he can keep alive.
”
”
Mary Renault (The King Must Die (Theseus, #1))
“
There's no such thing as witches. But there used to be.
It used to be the air was so thick with magic you could taste it on your tongue like ash. Witches lurked in every tangled wood and waited at every midnight-crossroad with sharp-toothed smiles. They conversed with dragons on lonely mountaintops and rode rowan-wood brooms across full moons; they charmed the stars to dance beside them on the summer solstice and rode to battle with familiars at their heels. It used to be witches were wild as crows and fearless as foxes, because magic blazed bright and the night was theirs.
But then came the plague and the purges. The dragons were slain and the witches were burned and the night belonged to men with torches and crosses.
Witching isn’t all gone, of course. My grandmother, Mama Mags, says they can’t ever kill magic because it beats like a great red heartbeat on the other side of everything, that if you close your eyes you can feel it thrumming beneath the soles of your feet, thumpthumpthump. It’s just a lot better-behaved than it used to be.
Most respectable folk can’t even light a candle with witching, these days, but us poor folk still dabble here and there. Witch-blood runs thick in the sewers, the saying goes. Back home every mama teaches her daughters a few little charms to keep the soup-pot from boiling over or make the peonies bloom out of season. Every daddy teaches his sons how to spell ax-handles against breaking and rooftops against leaking.
Our daddy never taught us shit, except what a fox teaches chickens — how to run, how to tremble, how to outlive the bastard — and our mama died before she could teach us much of anything. But we had Mama Mags, our mother’s mother, and she didn’t fool around with soup-pots and flowers.
The preacher back home says it was God’s will that purged the witches from the world. He says women are sinful by nature and that magic in their hands turns naturally to rot and ruin, like the first witch Eve who poisoned the Garden and doomed mankind, like her daughter’s daughters who poisoned the world with the plague. He says the purges purified the earth and shepherded us into the modern era of Gatling guns and steamboats, and the Indians and Africans ought to be thanking us on their knees for freeing them from their own savage magics.
Mama Mags said that was horseshit, and that wickedness was like beauty: in the eye of the beholder. She said proper witching is just a conversation with that red heartbeat, which only ever takes three things: the will to listen to it, the words to speak with it, and the way to let it into the world. The will, the words, and the way.
She taught us everything important comes in threes: little pigs, bill goats gruff, chances to guess unguessable names. Sisters.
There wer ethree of us Eastwood sisters, me and Agnes and Bella, so maybe they'll tell our story like a witch-tale. Once upon a time there were three sisters. Mags would like that, I think — she always said nobody paid enough attention to witch-tales and whatnot, the stories grannies tell their babies, the secret rhymes children chant among themselves, the songs women sing as they work.
Or maybe they won't tell our story at all, because it isn't finished yet. Maybe we're just the very beginning, and all the fuss and mess we made was nothing but the first strike of the flint, the first shower of sparks.
There's still no such thing as witches.
But there will be.
”
”
Alix E. Harrow (The Once and Future Witches)
“
Mr. Haverstrom closes the door, leaving Patrick and me alone in the hallway. Pat smiles slickly, leaning in toward me. I step back until I press against the wall. It’s uncomfortable—but not threatening. Mostly because in addition to racquetball I’ve practiced aikido for years. So if Patrick tries anything funny, he’s in for a very painful surprise.
“Let’s be honest, Sarah: you know and I know the last thing you want to do is give a presentation in front of hundreds of people—your colleagues.”
My heart tries to crawl into my throat.
“So, how about this? You do the research portion, slides and such that I don’t really have time for, and I’ll take care of the presentation, giving you half the credit of course.”
Of course. I’ve heard this song before—in school “group projects” where I, the quiet girl, did all the work, but the smoothest, loudest talker took all the glory.
“I’ll get Haverstrom to agree on Saturday—I’m like a son to him,” Pat explains before leaning close enough that I can smell the garlic on his breath. “Let Big Pat take care of it. What do you say?”
I say there’s a special place in hell for people who refer to themselves in the third person.
But before I can respond, Willard’s firm, sure voice travels down the hall.
“I think you should back off, Nolan. Sarah’s not just ‘up for it,’ she’ll be fantastic at it.”
Pat waves his hand. “Quiet, midge—the adults are talking.”
And the adrenaline comes rushing back, but this time it’s not anxiety-induced—it’s anger. Indignation.
I push off the wall. “Don’t call him that.”
“He doesn’t mind.”
“I mind.”
He stares at me with something akin to surprise. Then scoffs and turns to Willard. “You always let a woman fight your battles?”
I take another step forward, forcing him to move back. “You think I can’t fight a battle because I’m a woman?”
“No, I think you can’t fight a battle because you’re a woman who can barely string three words together if more than two people are in the room.”
I’m not hurt by the observation. For the most part, it’s true.
But not this time.
I smile slowly, devilishly. Suddenly, I’m Cathy Linton come to life—headstrong and proud.
“There are more than two people standing here right now. And I’ve got more than three words for you: fuck off, you arrogant, self-righteous swamp donkey.”
His expression is almost funny. Like he can’t decide if he’s more shocked that I know the word fuck or that I said it out loud to him—and not in the good way.
Then his face hardens and he points at me. “That’s what I get for trying to help your mute arse? Have fun making a fool of yourself.”
I don’t blink until he’s down the stairs and gone.
Willard slow-claps as he walks down the hall to me.
“Swamp donkey?”
I shrug. “It just came to me.”
“Impressive.” Then he bows and kisses the back of my hand. “You were magnificent.”
“Not half bad, right? It felt good.”
“And you didn’t blush once.”
I push my dark hair out of my face, laughing self-consciously. “Seems like I forget all about being nervous when I’m defending someone else.”
Willard nods. “Good. And though I hate to be the twat who points it out, there’s something else you should probably start thinking about straight away.”
“What’s that?”
“The presentation in front of hundreds of people.”
And just like that, the tight, sickly feeling washes back over me.
So this is what doomed feels like.
I lean against the wall. “Oh, broccoli balls.
”
”
Emma Chase (Royally Matched (Royally, #2))
“
He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit’s bows, folded his large brown hands across his chest, uplifted his closed eyes, and offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea. This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual tolling of a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog — in such tones he commenced reading the following hymn; but changing his manner towards the concluding stanzas, burst forth with a pealing exultation and joy — The ribs and terrors in the whale, Arched over me a dismal gloom, While all God’s sun-lit waves rolled by, And lift me deepening down to doom. I saw the opening maw of hell, With endless pains and sorrows there; Which none but they that feel can tell- Oh, I was plunging to despair. In black distress, I called my God, When I could scarce believe him mine, He bowed his ear to my complaints- No more the whale did me confine. With speed he flew to my relief, As on a radiant dolphin borne; Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone The face of my Deliverer God. My song for ever shall record That terrible, that joyful hour; I give the glory to my God, His all the mercy and the power.
”
”
Herman Melville (Moby Dick)
“
Beyoncé and Rihanna were pop stars. Pop stars were musical performers whose celebrity had exploded to the point where they could be identified by single words. You could say BEYONCÉ or RIHANNA to almost anyone anywhere in the industrialized world and it would conjure a vague neurological image of either Beyoncé or Rihanna. Their songs were about the same six subjects of all songs by all pop stars: love, celebrity, fucking, heartbreak, money and buying ugly shit.
It was the Twenty-First Century. It was the Internet. Fame was everything.
Traditional money had been debased by mass production. Traditional money had ceased to be about an exchange of humiliation for food and shelter. Traditional money had become the equivalent of a fantasy world in which different hunks of vampiric plastic made emphatic arguments about why they should cross the threshold of your home. There was nothing left to buy. Fame was everything because traditional money had failed. Fame was everything because fame was the world’s last valid currency.
Beyoncé and Rihanna were part of a popular entertainment industry which deluged people with images of grotesque success. The unspoken ideology of popular entertainment was that its customers could end up as famous as the performers. They only needed to try hard enough and believe in their dreams.
Like all pop stars, Beyoncé and Rihanna existed off the illusion that their fame was a shared experience with their fans. Their fans weren’t consumers. Their fans were fellow travelers on a journey through life.
In 2013, this connection between the famous and their fans was fostered on Twitter. Beyoncé and Rihanna were tweeting. Their millions of fans were tweeting back. They too could achieve their dreams.
Of course, neither Beyoncé nor Rihanna used Twitter. They had assistants and handlers who packaged their tweets for maximum profit and exposure.
Fame could purchase the illusion of being an Internet user without the purchaser ever touching a mobile phone or a computer.
That was a difference between the rich and the poor.
The poor were doomed to the Internet, which was a wonderful resource for watching shitty television, experiencing angst about other people’s salaries, and casting doubt on key tenets of Mormonism and Scientology.
If Beyoncé or Rihanna were asked about how to be like them and gave an honest answer, it would have sounded like this: “You can’t. You won’t. You are nothing like me. I am a powerful mixture of untamed ambition, early childhood trauma and genetic mystery. I am a portal in the vacuum of space. The formula for my creation is impossible to replicate. The One True God made me and will never make the like again. You are nothing like me.
”
”
Jarett Kobek (I Hate the Internet)
“
Our patients predict the culture by living out consciously what the masses of people are able to keep unconscious for the time being. The neurotic is cast by destiny into a Cassandra role. In vain does Cassandra, sitting on the steps of the palace at Mycenae when Agamemnon brings her back from Troy, cry, “Oh for the nightingale’s pure song and a fate like hers!” She knows, in her ill-starred life, that “the pain flooding the song of sorrow is [hers] alone,” and that she must predict the doom she sees will occur there. The Mycenaeans speak of her as mad, but they also believe she does speak the truth, and that she has a special power to anticipate events. Today, the person with psychological problems bears the burdens of the conflicts of the times in his blood, and is fated to predict in his actions and struggles the issues which will later erupt on all sides in the society.
The first and clearest demonstration of this thesis is seen in the sexual problems which Freud found in his Victorian patients in the two decades before World War I. These sexual topics‒even down to the words‒were entirely denied and repressed by the accepted society at the time. But the problems burst violently forth into endemic form two decades later after World War II. In the 1920's, everybody was preoccupied with sex and its functions. Not by the furthest stretch of the imagination can anyone argue that Freud "caused" this emergence. He rather reflected and interpreted, through the data revealed by his patients, the underlying conflicts of the society, which the “normal” members could and did succeed in repressing for the time being. Neurotic problems are the language of the unconscious emerging into social awareness.
A second, more minor example is seen in the great amount of hostility which was found in patients in the 1930's. This was written about by Horney, among others, and it emerged more broadly and openly as a conscious phenomenon in our society a decade later.
A third major example may be seen in the problem of anxiety. In the late 1930's and early 1940's, some therapists, including myself, were impressed by the fact that in many of our patients anxiety was appearing not merely as a symptom of repression or pathology, but as a generalized character state. My research on anxiety, and that of Hobart Mowrer and others, began in the early 1940's. In those days very little concern had been shown in this country for anxiety other than as a symptom of pathology. I recall arguing in the late 1940's, in my doctoral orals, for the concept of normal anxiety, and my professors heard me with respectful silence but with considerable frowning.
Predictive as the artists are, the poet W. H. Auden published his Age of Anxiety in 1947, and just after that Bernstein wrote his symphony on that theme. Camus was then writing (1947) about this “century of fear,” and Kafka already had created powerful vignettes of the coming age of anxiety in his novels, most of them as yet untranslated. The formulations of the scientific establishment, as is normal, lagged behind what our patients were trying to tell us. Thus, at the annual convention of the American Psychopathological Association in 1949 on the theme “Anxiety,” the concept of normal anxiety, presented in a paper by me, was still denied by most of the psychiatrists and psychologists present.
But in the 1950's a radical change became evident; everyone was talking about anxiety and there were conferences on the problem on every hand. Now the concept of "normal" anxiety gradually became accepted in the psychiatric literature. Everybody, normal as well as neurotic, seemed aware that he was living in the “age of anxiety.” What had been presented by the artists and had appeared in our patients in the late 30's and 40's was now endemic in the land.
”
”
Rollo May (Love and Will)
“
Once Mom and Ossie and I spent an afternoon alone together in her hospital room. We were watching the small TV above her head politely, as if the TV were a foreign dignitary giving an unintelligible lecture, and waiting for any news from Dr. Gautman. As if on cue, that lame movie from the sixties started playing, Ladies In Waiting. A quintet of actresses haunt the punch bowl--they are supposed to be spinster sisters or spinster best friends, or maybe just ugly and needy acquaintances--anyhow, these pink chameleons, voiceless in their party chignons, they stand around the back of a ballroom having flashbacks for most of the movie, regretting older events in their minds, ladling cups of glowing punch from a big bowl, and only after the dying violin note of the final song do they at last step away from the wall. "Oh, but we DID want to dance!" the actresses cry at the end of the scene, their faces changing almost totally. All these angry multiplying women.
Hopes were like these ladies, Mom told us. Hopes were wallflowers. Hopes hugged the perimeter of a dance floor in your brain, tugging at their party lace, all perfume and hems and doomed expectation. They fanned their dance cards, these guests that pressed against the walls of your heart. Our mom had become agitated as the movie credits rolled: There had never been a chance for them! What STUPID women. That day we watched TV with her until the hospital began to empty, until the lights went white as a screech and the room grew so quiet...
”
”
Karen Russell
“
As Red Buffalo disappeared into the darkness, Hunter’s hand, which was riding Loretta’s thickened waist, tightened. He glanced down, his brows lifting in question. With a wondrous expression on his face, he placed his other palm on her slightly swollen abdomen. “Blue Eyes, what is this?”
Loretta looked up at him through tears. “Our child, Hunter.”
His warm fingers flexed and curled protectively. A slow smile spread across his mouth. “A child…” The words were a reverent whisper.
“Our child.”
Loretta placed her hand over his, so filled with love for him that she felt she might die of it. The future was filled with uncertainty. The way ahead might be fraught with danger. And they would be completely alone. Two people, against a world of hostility.
None of that really frightened her, though. Theirs was no ordinary love, and she knew the course of their lives would have a far greater purpose than that of simply being together.
They would find their way west, just as the prophecy had foretold. She knew they would. The Comanche nation was doomed. There was no stopping the tide of white settlers that washed over their land. An entire race of people would eventually be conquered and all but destroyed.
She and Hunter were like a seed floating on the wind. Somehow, somewhere, they would find a fertile place, where they could put down roots and grow strong. Through them, the People would live on. The gods had sent her and Hunter a sign to help them believe, to give them faith, and she no longer had a single doubt that all the words of Hunter’s song would somehow come to pass.
Within her grew a child, both tosi tivo and Comanche, the child of the great warrior with indigo eyes and his honey-haired maiden. A child who brought new hope for the People and tomorrow.
”
”
Catherine Anderson (Comanche Moon (Comanche, #1))
“
They would find their way west, just as the prophecy had foretold. She knew they would. The Comanche nation was doomed. There was no stopping the tide of white settlers that washed over their land. An entire race of people would eventually be conquered and all but destroyed.
She and Hunter were like a seed floating on the wind. Somehow, somewhere, they would find a fertile place, where they could put down roots and grow strong. Through them, the People would live on. The gods had sent her and Hunter a sign to help them believe, to give them faith, and she no longer had a single doubt that all the words of Hunter’s song would somehow come to pass.
Within her grew a child, both tosi tivo and Comanche, the child of the great warrior with indigo eyes and his honey-haired maiden. A child who brought new hope for the People and tomorrow.
”
”
Catherine Anderson (Comanche Moon (Comanche, #1))
“
To be both Irish and Finnish is to be bred for drinking—doomed to burst into song and worry later what everyone thought about it.
”
”
Sarah Hepola (Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget)
“
The Prophecy Seelie and Unseelie, two parts of a whole, destroy one, and to the other woe. Without light, there can be no shadow, winter will reign, and darkness will follow. Thousands slaughtered in vengeful creed, thousands more sold in the name of greed. A single summer seed to return a Seelie clan, a starflower sewn into a foreign land. To bridge the abyss and brave a sea of fire, strength to heal and blossom amid treachery most dire. Railea’s mightiest to kneel before her bloom, an Unseelie king be brought to doom. The necromancer’s dagger falls to a guardian, a cursed twin at the brink of desperation. His voiceless sister’s blood sings of untouched power, twelve runes carved on her spine at the blood moon’s hour. Two hearts to break while one ceases, the necromancer’s lost dagger her death releases.
”
”
Hollee Mands (Blood Song (Warriors of the Five Realms #3))
“
Sometimes I feel as if I am trapped, as if the events and habits of my past have worn deep ruts in the road from which my wheels cannot escape, and I am doomed to follow them over and over again.
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Andrew C. Piazza (A Song for the Void)
“
She had heard that the first dragons came from the east, from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai and the islands of the Jade Sea ... Magic had died in the west when the Doom fell on Valyria and the Lands of the Long Summer, and neither spell-forged steel nor stormsingers nor dragons could hold it back, but Dany had always heard that the east was different.
...
"A trader from Qarth once told me that dragons came from the moon," blonde Doreah said...
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1))
“
She had heard that the first dragons had come from the east, from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai and the islands of the Jade Sea ... Magic had died in the west when the Doom fell on Valyria and the Lands of the Long Summer, and neither spell-forged steel nor stormsingers nor dragons could hold it back, but Dany had always heard that the east was different.
...
"A trader from Qarth once told me that dragons came from the moon," blonde Doreah said...
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1))
“
The music in your world," Nesta said suddenly, interrupting Bryce's doom spiral. "It's all simply available to anyone?"
"In a way, yes you can find any song, any piece of music, and listen to it whenever you want."
"You have wonders in your world," Nesta said.
Azriel added from a few steps behind them, "And terrors.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas
“
Patting dirt over the hole, she said a silent prayer that the paper would birth a colorful array of wildflowers. From her forgiveness, a permanent flowering would grow in tribute to a woman born at the wrong time and in the wrong place—a doomed girl who, with the right care, love, and support, might’ve learned to use her unfathomable powers for good.
”
”
Tia Williams (A Love Song for Ricki Wilde)
“
It was entirely possible that one song could destroy your life. Yes, musical doom could fall on a lone human form and crush it like a bug. The song, that song, was sent from somewhere else to find you, to pick the scab of your whole existence. The song was your personal shitty fate, manifest as a throb of pop floating out of radios everywhere.
”
”
Jonathan Lethem (The Fortress of Solitude)
“
Even as the stupid dwarves cut down a few of my lesser fighters, more warriors swarm to join the ranks of my army! Doom is upon you all, Drizzt Do’Urden! Akar Kessell is come!” The fog cleared. With a thousand fervent warriors behind him, Wulfgar approached the unsuspecting monsters. The goblins and orcs who were closest to the charging barbarians, holding unbending faith in the words of their master, cheered at the coming of their promised allies. Then they died. The barbarian horde drove through their ranks, singing and killing with wild abandonment. Even through the clatter of weapons, the sound of the dwarves joining in the Song of Tempos could be heard. Wide-eyed, jaw hanging open, trembling with rage, Kessell waved the shocking image away and swung back on Drizzt. “It does not matter!” he said, fighting to keep his tone steady. “I shall deal with them mercilessly! And then Bryn Shander shall topple in flames!
”
”
R.A. Salvatore (The Crystal Shard (The Icewind Dale, #1; The Legend of Drizzt, #4))
“
It was doomed to end over something. Old age. Exhaustion. Death. Might as well be love.
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”
C.D. Reiss (Forbidden (Songs of Perdition, #1-3))
“
Whoever is coming is bringing their own theme song!” Ramses
”
”
J.L. Langland (The Apostles of Doom (Demons of Astlan, #3))
“
The song is "Always Wanting You," a favorite of Dad's, where cynical, heartsick Merle croon about always wanting but never having his love, and about how hard it will be to face tomorrow cuz he knows he'll just be wanting her again. Doomed.
”
”
Rachel Cohn
“
It was entirely possible that one song could destroy your life. Yes, musical doom could fall on a lone human form and crush it like a bug. The song, that song, was sent from somewhere else to find you, to pick the scab of your whole existence. The song was your personal shitty fate, manifest as a throb of pop floating out of radios everywhere.
”
”
Jonathan Lethem
“
Prophecies are a funny thing. They’re nothing but lengthy riddles that only a blessed few can unravel, and yet people hang on to their every word as if Fate’s secrets were being spilled. Prophecies weave patterns of words and symbols into a rope so thick you could hang yourself with it. They cause confusion, hope, paranoia, comfort, fear, and even war. They doom the virtuous before birth and revive the damned in their final hour. They are poems that don’t rhyme and lyrics without a song.
And we rely on them as drivers of our own fate.
”
”
A.P. Bartels (The Dark Prophecy (Princes of Hell))
“
Now the world runs on swiftly to great tidings. And one of men, even of Beor's house, shall indeed come, and the Girdle of Melian shall not restrain him, for doom greater than my power shall send him; and the songs that shall spring from that coming shall endure when all Middle-earth is changed.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien
“
You never know just how much someone loves you. Even if they say it—“I love you this much”—how much? It’s not enough. Words are so faulty and frail. They only ever convey half of what you’re thinking. They’re manmade, after all. They’re doomed to fail by virtue of their architect.
”
”
Rose Christo (Wandering Spirit's Last Song)
“
Look through the heavy pine forest and see a fire glowing. Beside it sits a bear of a man, knife in one hand, a clay bowl on the ground in front of him.
It has been a long time since he last shed blood for his Gods. Tonight would satisfy them a little while longer. The screech of a doomed animal is cut short and the bowl fills with its steaming blood. He puts it on a flat stone by the fire. He cuts his scarred wrist to let his own blood drip into the warming mixture.
For many days he has thrown his runes and has had no clear sight. He has marked each one with his blood and still they reveal nothing.
A tune starts deep in his gut. It stretches and twists like an unborn child, travelling up like a snake through his chest, setting his bones to shake. He grinds his jaw shut to keep it from escaping as it creeps up his throat.
His lips start to vibrate with the tune as it tries to push its way out. The man is well learned in the ways of the song and knows how to control it. The bowl is steaming heavily and he leans over it to breathe in the blood fumes that will give his visions. This man’s name is Vasilli and he is trying to find his brother.
”
”
Amy Kuivalainen
“
There is one monster that stalks every one of us. Death, you’ll say, yes, of course, death is his brother, but old age is the monster. This is the true (and doomed) battle, with no flashiness, no fireworks, no swords inlaid with the tooth of Saint Peter, with no magical armor and unexpected allies, without hope that bards will sing songs about you, with no rituals . . . An epic battle with no epos. Long lonely maneuvers, waiting, more like trench warfare, lying in wait, hiding out, quick sorties, prowling the battlefield “between the clock and the bed,
”
”
Georgi Gospodinov (Time Shelter)
“
It was a siren’s song beckoning me to my doom, and it was so beautiful I might’ve succumbed even knowing it would lead me to hell.
”
”
Ana Huang (Twisted Lies (Twisted, #4))
“
They say a girl with an ill-fated mother is doomed to follow in her footsteps.
”
”
K.X. Song (The Night Ends with Fire (The Night Ends with Fire, #1))
“
The Composition of Death Upon Your Breath"
About the Song:
The Composition of Death Upon Your Breath delves into the dark and haunting theme of a lover poisoned by a sinister concoction found in the medieval Grand Grimoire. The song narrates the tragic tale of love tainted by the cruel hand of death, where a forbidden potion is meticulously prepared with arcane ingredients.
The song's lyrics evoke a gothic atmosphere, intertwining elements of medieval alchemy and romantic tragedy. The potion's ingredients—Red Copper, Nitric Acid, Verdigris, Arsenic, Oak Bark, Rose Water, and Black Soot—are transformed into metaphors for the slow, inevitable demise of the lover. This deadly recipe becomes a symbol of both the destructive power and the twisted beauty of forbidden love.
The music captures the essence of gothic black metal with its somber melodies, eerie harmonies, and intense, brooding instrumentals. Each note and lyric serve to illustrate the dark journey of love poisoned by betrayal and malice. The song's atmosphere is thick with melancholy and dread, inviting listeners into a world where passion and death intertwine in a tragic dance.
Copyright Notice:
The Composition of Death Upon Your Breath © 2024 Umbrae Sortilegium. All rights reserved. Unauthorized copying, reproduction, or distribution of this song or its lyrics is prohibited.
The Composition of Death Upon Your Breath.
(Verse 1)
In an ancient tome of shadowed lore,
A secret poison to settle the score,
A lover’s whisper, a deadly art,
The composition to tear us apart.
(Pre-Chorus)
Red copper gleaming, nitric acid's burn,
Verdigris and arsenic, from which there’s no return,
Oak bark and rose water, a fatal serenade,
Black soot to bind it, in darkness, it’s made.
(Chorus)
The composition of death upon your breath,
A kiss that leads to the silent depths,
In your arms, I fall to eternal rest,
Poisoned by the love that you professed.
(Verse 2)
A new, glazed pot, the spell's design,
A potion brewed, in shadows confined,
Your lips, a chalice of cold despair,
In each embrace, a whispered prayer.
(Pre-Chorus)
Red copper gleaming, nitric acid's burn,
Verdigris and arsenic, from which there’s no return,
Oak bark and rose water, a fatal serenade,
Black soot to bind it, in darkness, it’s made.
(Chorus)
The composition of death upon your breath,
A kiss that leads to the silent depths,
In your arms, I fall to eternal rest,
Poisoned by the love that you professed.
(Bridge)
In your gaze, the twilight's fall,
A lover's kiss, the end of all,
The Grand Grimoire, its secrets told,
In every kiss, the poison’s cold.
(Breakdown)
A potion brewed from darkest sin,
Your breath the gateway, let death begin,
A recipe of doom, our fates entwined,
In your arms, I lose my mind.
(Chorus)
The composition of death upon your breath,
A kiss that leads to the silent depths,
In your arms, I fall to eternal rest,
Poisoned by the love that you professed.
(Outro)
The final breath, a lover's sigh,
In your arms, I’m doomed to die,
The composition, a lover’s theft,
Death upon your breath, my final bequest.
Lyrics and ALL Vocals yours truly.
Lead Guitar & Symphonics Raz Wolfgang
Drums Alexander Novichkov
Bass Auron Nightshade
Guitarist Kael Thornfield
”
”
Odette Austin
“
They say a girl with an ill-fated mother is doomed to follow in her footsteps.
”
”
K. X. Song
“
I think about impending, weightless doom. It's a phrase I like and understood. I tuck it away in the corner of my mind to pull out later, maybe for a song.
”
”
Jennifer Niven (All the Bright Places)
“
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 hallows halls beneath the fells.
For ancient kind 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 winds were 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.
For 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!
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (The Lord of the Rings, #0))
“
At the end of the day, every love is doomed to end in a Mustafa Sandal song: -You're contradicting my ego, get out of here!
”
”
Arzum Uzun (BİTLİ PİLEYBOY)