Quotation
"'So sadness is a place?' Giovanni asked.
'Sometimes people live there for years,' I said." -Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

Quotation
"'Is he then an unhappy man?'
Poirot said, 'So unhappy that he has forgotten what happiness means. So unhappy that he does not know he is unhappy.'" -Agatha Christie, "The Apples of the Hesperides"

Quotation
"And I will settle for nothing less than a great soul; it would be sinful to compromise, when I have known this." -Sylvia Plath, Letters Home

Quotations
"'But the trouble is there aren't any bends in my road. I can see it stretching straight out before me to the sky-line…endless monotony. Oh, does life ever frighten you, Anne, with its blankness…its swarms of cold, uninteresting people?'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Windy Poplars

"We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into insipid misdoing and shabby achievement." -George Eliot, Middlemarch

Random Musing
The Montucky Review published a poem of mine today. You can read it here as well as (for now at least) on their homepage.

Quotations
"Calm is the one thing that will never let us down.  And Amalfitano said: everything else lets us down?  And the voice: yes, that's right, it's hard to admit, I mean it's hard to have to admit it to you, but that's the honest-to-God truth.  Ethics lets us down?  The sense of duty lets us down?  Honesty lets us down?  Curiosity lets us down?  Love lets us down?  Bravery lets us down?  Art lets us down?  That's right, said the voice, everything lets us down, everything.  Or lets you down, which isn't the same thing but for our purposes it might as well be, except calm, calm is the one thing that never lets us down, though that's no guarantee or anything, I have to tell you." -Roberto Bolaño, 2666, (Translated by Natasha Wimmer)

"That calm acceptance went to my head at last. It fascinated me. It led me on and on till I threw every card that I possessed at him and sat back and watched him arrange them in his hand." -Katherine Mansfield, "Je ne parle pas français"

"…'Tis calm indeed! So calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness…." -Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Frost at Midnight"

"…Though forced to drudge for the dregs of men,
And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen,
And mingle among the jostling crowd,
Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud—
I often come to this quiet place,
To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face,
And gaze upon thee in silent dream,
For in thy lonely and lovely stream
An image of that calm life appears
That won my heart in my greener years." -William Cullen Bryant, "Green River"

Quotation
"'That's just how it is here.  It's always sad at this time of day.  It's a goddamn landscape for women.'" -Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (Translated by Natasha Wimmer)

Quotations
"…dead people need us to remember them…." -Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

"She had a way of embroidering life with stars." -L.M. Montgomery, "Old Man Shaw's Girl," Chronicles of Avonlea

"A creature of joy, she ran or danced." -L.M. Montgomery, Magic for Marigold

Random Musing
This year went by so quickly. You haven't been forgotten. Not that there was ever any chance of that happening. Sending you so much love. Rest in peace.

Random Musing
This is absolutely delightful.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.

Quotation
"'We can't command our love, but we can our actions.'" -Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor"

Quotations
Stella: What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change.
-Rear Window

Stella: Nothing has caused the human race so much trouble as intelligence.
-Rear Window

L.B.: Well, when am I gonna see you again?
Lisa: Not for a long time. At least…not until tomorrow night.
-Rear Window

L.B.: He’s washing down the bathroom walls.
Stella: Hmm, must have splattered a lot…. Well, why not? That’s what we’re all thinking.
-Rear Window

Stella: Let’s go down and find out what’s buried in the garden.
Lisa: Why not? I’ve always wanted to meet Mrs. Thorwald.
-Rear Window

Painting
"Mrs. Thorwald"

Quotation
"'That's what I'm living on now, honey, dreams, dreams of what I used to do.'" -Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Quotations
"'Smells like snow,' he said. 'It always seems to me that November is a homesick time. Does it ever strike you that way, Mrs. Blythe?'
'Yes. The year is looking back sadly to her lost spring.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Ingleside

"And before us was the dream of spring.  It is always safe to dream of spring.  For it is sure to come; and if it be not just as we have pictured it, it will be infinitely sweeter."
-L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl

"Even while I write, I know this too shall pass and some day, eons hence, it may possibly be spring." -Sylvia Plath, Letters Home

Quotation
"'Felicity, felicity — how shall I say it? — is quaffed out of a golden cup in every latitude: the flavour is with you — with you alone, and you can make it as intoxicating as you please.'" -Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

Quotations
"But Anne with her elbows on the window sill, her soft cheek laid against her clasped hands, and her eyes filled with visions, looked out unheedingly across city roof and spire to that glorious dome of sunset sky and wove her dreams of a possible future from the golden tissue of youth's own optimism. All the Beyond was hers, with its possibilities lurking rosily in the oncoming years — each year a rose of promise to be woven into an immortal chaplet." -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

"More than putting another man on the moon,
more than a New Year’s resolution of yogurt and yoga,
we need the opportunity to dance
with really exquisite strangers.…" -Matthew Dickman, "Slow Dance"

Quotation
"'The important thing is to love this world; if a man has loved so much as a grapefruit and found it beautiful, God will save him.'" -Sylvia Plath, Letters Home

Quotation
"The idea of perfect happiness and adjustment was exploded in Brave New World; what I am fighting for is the strength to claim the 'right to be unhappy' together with the joy of creative affirmation…" -Sylvia Plath, Letters Home

Quotation
"'Hate oughtn't to be stronger than love — but her hate was. And my hate for her is — I hate her — I hate her — I hate her.'" -Agatha Christie, Murder In Retrospect

Quotation
Puck: If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend.
If you pardon, we will mend.
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearnéd luck
Now to scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call.
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends. -William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

Painting
Untitled

*Available for purchase on Etsy.

Quotation
"This morning, as they drove out to the nursing home, she realized that her life was becoming unbearable. Every morning she would play games with herself, just to get her through the day. Like telling herself that today something wonderful was going to happen…that the next time the phone would ring, it would be good news that would change her life…or that she was going to get a surprise in the mail. But it was never anything but junk mail, a wrong number, a neighbor wanting something.
The quiet hysteria and awful despair had started when she finally began to realize that nothing was ever going to change, that nobody would be coming for her to take her away. She began to feel as if she were at the bottom of a well, screaming, no one to hear.
Lately, it had been and endless procession of long, black nights and gray mornings, when her sense of failure swept over her like a five-hundred-pound wave; and she was scared. But it wasn't death that she feared. She had looked down into that black pit of death and had wanted to jump in, once too often. As a matter of fact, the thought began to appeal to her more and more.
She eve knew how she would kill herself. It would be with a silver bullet. As round and as smooth as an ice-cold blue martini. She would place the gun in the freezer for a few hours before she did it, so it would feel frosty and cold against her head. She could almost feel the ice-cold bullet shooting through her hot, troubled brain, freezing the pain for good. The sound of the gun blast would be the last sound she would ever hear. And then…nothing. Maybe just the silent sound that bird might hear, flying in the clean, cool air, high above the earth. The sweet, pure air of freedom.
No, it wasn't death she was afraid of. It was this life of hers that was beginning to remind her of that gray intensive care waiting room." -Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe