ats-library

[ats-library]

You are the second stage of creation. You fill the empty space and the desert. You may be a means to an end, but that end is the beginning of everything. Without you, there is nothing—no soil for creation.

The idiot, Elif Batuman

[ats-library]

We have never been as happy or as miserable. Our quarrels are portentous, tremendous, violent. We are both wrathful to the point of madness; we desire death. My face is ravaged by tears, the veins on my temple swell. Hugo's mouth trem bles. One cry from me brings him suddenly into my arms, sobbing. And then he desires me physically. We cry and kiss and come at the same moment. And the next moment we analyze and talk rationally. It is like the life of the Russians in The Idiot. It is hysteria. In cooler moments I wonder at the extravagance of our feelings. Dullness and peace are forever over.

Anäis Nin, from "Henry and June".

[ats-library]

“To encounter oneself is to encounter the other: and this is love. If I know that my soul trembles, I know that yours does too: and if I can respect this, both of us can live.”

— James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work: Essays (via fleurjaeggy)

[ats-library]

The world, our world, is depleted, impoverished enough. Away with all duplicates of it, until we again experience more immediately what we have.

Susan Sontag, in "Against Interpretation"

[ats-library]

None of us can ever retrieve that innocence before all theory when art knew no need to justify itself, when one did not ask of a work of art what it said because one knew (or thought one knew) what it did.

Susan Sontag, in "Against Interpretation"

[ats-library]

‘That is my face,’ said Rhoda, ‘in the looking-glass behind Susan’s shoulder—that face is my face. But I will duck behind her to hide it, for I am not here. I have no face. Other people have faces; Susan and Jinny have faces; they are here. Their world is the real world. The things they lift are heavy. They say Yes, they say No; whereas I shift and change and am seen through in a second. If they meet a housemaid she looks at them without laughing. But she laughs at me. They know what to say if spoken to. They laugh really; they get angry really; while I have to look first and do what other people do when they have done it.

‘See now with what extraordinary certainty Jinny pulls on her stockings, simply to play tennis. That I admire. But I like Susan’s way better, for she is more resolute, and less ambitious of distinction than Jinny. Both despise me for copying what they do; but Susan sometimes teaches me, for instance, how to tie a bow, while Jinny has her own knowledge but keeps it to herself. They have friends to sit by. They have things to say privately in corners. But I attach myself only to names and faces; and hoard them like amulets against disaster. I choose out across the hall some unknown face and can hardly drink my tea when she whose name I do not know sits opposite. I choke. I am rocked from side to side by the violence of my emotion. I imagine these nameless, these immaculate people, watching me from behind bushes. I leap high to excite their admiration. At night, in bed, I excite their complete wonder. I often die pierced with arrows to win their tears. If they should say, or I should see from a label on their boxes, that they were in Scarborough last holidays, the whole town runs gold, the whole pavement is illuminated. Therefore I hate looking-glasses which show me my real face. Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I must push my foot stealthily lest I should fall off the edge of the world into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body.’

Virginia Woolf, in 'The Waves'

[ats-library]

"Everything he said came from so thoroughly outside myself. I wouldn’t have been able to invent or guess any of it."

Elif Batuman, in 'The Idiot'

[ats-library]

You grow cold, or you die yourself.

Megan Nolan, in 'Acts of Desperation'

[ats-library]

Being in love feels like nothing so much as hope; a distilled, clear hope which would be impossible to manufacture on your own.

Megan Nolan, in 'Acts of Desperation'

[ats-library]

Reading poems in the bath, chuckling about what a beautiful pair they were, some mutual understanding that they were more troubled than anyone else.

Megan Nolan, in 'Acts of Desperation'

[ats-library]

Being in love was like that to me, a shield, a higher purpose, a promise to something outside of yourself.

Megan Nolan, in 'Acts of Desperation'

[ats-library]

I don't regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full as one should do everything that one does to the full. There was no pleasure I did not experience.

Oscar Wilde in 'Only Dull People are Brilliant at Breakfast'

[ats-library]

I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.

A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?

Oscar Wilde, in 'Only Dull People are Brilliant at Breakfast'

[ats-library]

Life is much too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.

Oscar Wilde, in 'Only Dull People are Brilliant at Breakfast'

[ats-library]

it's too soft and wet, I say hate, and I love to hate. It's 1992 and I'm the Gloomiest Child Queen.

Jenny Hval, in 'Girls Against God'

[ats-library]

Wait for her until Night speaks to you thus: There is no one alive but the two of you.

So take her gently to the death you so desire, and wait.

Mahmoud Darwish, in 'Unfortunately, it was paradise'

[ats-library]

"I am asking you (as I stand with my back to you) to take my life in your hands and tell me whether I am doomed always to cause repulsion in those I love?"

- Virginia Woolf in 'The Waves'