Quotations
"'I'm always a little mad in spring. But it's such a divine madness.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Ingleside

"'Spring is such a happyfying time isnt it….'" -L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon

"…spring is just around the corner and I have forgotten everything but gladness.'"
-L.M. Montgomery, Emily Climbs

"One could not be altogether unhappy, in springtime…" -L.M. Montgomery, Magic for Marigold

Quotation
"…All I want is to tell you stories about my life.

For each new friend we make, the past becomes an unintended
     secret.
An invisible hallway unfolds behind each friend's body, hidden from
     view by that friend's newness.
It makes me lonely." -Ken Chen, "3. The Invisible Memoir"

Quotations
"…having learned that people cannot be moulded like clay…" -Louisa May Alcott, Jo's Boys

"'…Nature has but little clay…like that of which she moulded you.'" -Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Quotations
"It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and women." -Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

"'…because talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing.'" -Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

"'On, I don't think I'm a genius!' cried Josie, growing calm and sober as she listened to the melodious voice and looked into the expressive face that filled her with confidence, so strong, sincere and kindly was it. 'I only want to find out if I have talent enough to go on, and after years of study be able to act well in any of the good plays people never tire of seeing. I don't expected to be a Mrs. Siddons or a Miss Cameron, much as I long to be; but it does seem as if I had something in me which can't come out in any way but this. When I act I'm perfectly happy. I seem to live, to be in my own world, and each new part is a new friend. I love Shakespeare, and am never tired of his splendid people. Of course I don't understand it all; but it's like being alone at night with the mountains and the stars, solemn and grand, and I try to imagine how it will look when the sun comes up, and all is glorious and clear to me. I can't see, but I feel the beauty, and long to express it.'" -Louisa May Alcott, Jo's Boys

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

Quotations
"'"I've come home in love with loneliness…"'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

"'…or just there are hours when sheer loneliness wrings the stamina out of me.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

"'Oh, I am — I am — lonely — with the loneliness of unshared thought.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

"A terrible, abysmal loneliness engulfed Marigold." -L.M. Montgomery, Magic for Marigold

Random Musing
He would have been twenty-one today. Fittingly, his last song was titled "21."

Quotation
"'I wish I were dead, or that it were tomorrow night,' groaned Phil." -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

Random Musing
This is the only quote I have that is at all related to test-related stress. I know it doesn't exactly seem exam related, but I've read the book enough times to know the context. So you'll just have to trust me that it fits.

I don't personally have exams right now since I'm all gradumacated and everything, but I wish the rest of you good luck. Finals will be over very soon and then you can lie around and be lazy for a few weeks. Twill be loverly I'm sure. Happy studying!

Quotation
"…So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!…" -Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Frost at Midnight"

Quotations
"But as she sat there amid her guests, she felt the old ennui overtaking her, the hopelessness which so often assailed her, which came upon her like an obsession, like something extraneous, independent of volition.  It was something which announced itself; a chill breath that seemed to issue from some vast cavern wherein discords wailed.  There came over her the acute longing which always summoned into her spiritual vision the presence of the beloved one, overpowering her at once with a sense of the unattainable." -Kate Chopin, The Awakening

"In the chill hours of the morning twilight, when all was dim around her, she awoke — not with any amazed wondering where she was or what had happened, but with the clearest consciousness that she was looking into the eyes of sorrow." -George Eliot, Middlemarch

"…This is the Hour of Lead—
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—
First—Chill—then Stupor–then the letting go—" -Emily Dickinson, "After great pain, a formal feeling comes"

Quotation
"There's more to it than that, because words are everywhere, even in silence, which is never complete silence is it?" -Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (Translated by Natasha Wimmer)

Quotation
"'Is everything sad going to come untrue? What's happened to the world?'" -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Quotations
"'It's rather hard to decide just when people are grown up,' laughed Anne.
'That's a true word, dearie. Some are grown up when they're born, and others ain't grown up when they're eighty, believe me. That same Mrs. Roderick I was speaking of never grew up. She was as foolish when she was hundred as when she was ten.'
'Perhaps that was why she lived so long,' suggested Anne." -L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams

"'I used to dance and sing…on the shore, where nobody heard me,' said Myra Murray.
'Ah, but you've grown wiser since then,' said Agatha.
'No-o-o, foolisher,' said Myra Murray slowly. 'Too foolish now to dance along the shore.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Ingleside

"'How many will be brave enough to return when they feel it?' he whispered, his gleaming red eyes fixed upon the stars. 'And how many will be foolish enough to stay away?'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

"'…Age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimates youth…'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Touchstone:The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what
wise men do foolishly. -William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Desdemona: …Good faith, how foolish are our minds! -William Shakespeare, Othello

Quotation
"But there was happiness elsewhere which no description can reach." -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

Quotations
"Anne was always glad in the happiness of her friends; but it is sometimes a little lonely to be surrounded everywhere by happiness that is not your own." -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

"'I feel as if something has been torn suddenly out of my life and left a terrible hole. I feel as if I couldn't be I — as if I must have changed into somebody else and couldn't get used to it. It gives me a horrible lonely, dazed, helpless feeling. It's good to see you again — it seems as if you were a sort of anchor for my drifting soul.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams

"The wind had such a lonely sound tonight. It was reproaching her. It was saying, 'Silly…silly…silly,' over and over again." -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Ingleside

"If she had taken time to think she might have been very lonely." -L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

"'Night is beautiful when you are happy — comforting when you are in grief — terrible when you are lonely and unhappy. And to-night I have been horribly lonely. Misery overwhelmed me.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

"'I'm not lonely — I have my work and my books and the hope of spring…'" -L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

"'Oh, I am — I am — lonely — with the loneliness of unshared thought.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

Quotation
"'Thanksgiving was last week. There was no school and we had a great dinner. I et mince pie and rost turkey and frut cake and donuts and cheese and jam and choklut cake. Marilla said I'd die but I dident. Dora had earake after it, only it wasent in her ears it was in her stummick. I dident have earake anywhere.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

Quotation
"No, friends were like clothes: fine while they lasted but eventually they wore thin or you grew out of them." -David Nicholls, One Day

Quotation
"…Love is not full of pity, as men say,
But deaf and cruel, where he means to prey…." -Christopher Marlowe, "Hero and Leander"

Quotations
"'Isn't it queer that the things we writhe over at night are seldom wicked things? Just humiliating ones.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Windy Poplars

"'Be merciful to the failures, Emily. Satirise wickedness if you must — but pity weakness.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Emily Climbs

"'It's the fools that make all the trouble in the world, not the wicked.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Jane of Lantern Hill

"'I do not know whether it ought to be so, but certainly silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.  Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly.'" -Jane Austen, Emma

"'He was one of those creatures that are just simmering all the time with a silly sort of wickedness. Miserable devils that have no business to live at all.'" -Joseph Conrad, "The Secret Sharer"

"'People aren't either wicked or noble,' the hook-handed man said. 'They're like chef salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.'" -Lemony Snicket, The Grim Grotto

"'I'm afraid that's the wicked way of the world,' Dewey said, with a shake of his head. 'Everything's covered in smoke and mirrors…'" -Lemony Snicket, The Penultimate Peril

"He would argue with her about killing themselves; and explain how wicked people were; how he could see them making up lies as they passed in the street. He knew all their thoughts, he said; he knew everything. He knew the meaning of the world, he said." -Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Quotation
"The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that happy things are tainted with sadness, the way smoke leaves its ashen colors and scents on everything it touches. And you may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down." -Lemony Snicket, The Grim Grotto

Quotation
Biron: 'Tis more than need.
Have at you, then, affection's men at arms.
Consider what you first did swear unto,
To fast, to study, and to see no woman;
Flat treason 'gainst the kingly state of youth.
Say, can you fast? your stomachs are too young;
And abstinence engenders maladies.
And where that you have vow'd to study, lords,
In that each of you have forsworn his book,
Can you still dream and pore and thereon look?
For when would you, my lord, or you, or you,
Have found the ground of study's excellence
Without the beauty of a woman's face?
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive;
They are the ground, the books, the academes
From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire
Why, universal plodding poisons up
The nimble spirits in the arteries,
As motion and long-during action tires
The sinewy vigour of the traveller.
Now, for not looking on a woman's face,
You have in that forsworn the use of eyes
And study too, the causer of your vow;
For where is any author in the world
Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye?
Learning is but an adjunct to ourself
And where we are our learning likewise is:
Then when ourselves we see in ladies' eyes,
Do we not likewise see our learning there?
O, we have made a vow to study, lords,
And in that vow we have forsworn our books.
For when would you, my liege, or you, or you,
In leaden contemplation have found out
Such fiery numbers as the prompting eyes
Of beauty's tutors have enrich'd you with?
Other slow arts entirely keep the brain;
And therefore, finding barren practisers,
Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil:
But love, first learned in a lady's eyes,
Lives not alone immured in the brain;
But, with the motion of all elements,
Courses as swift as thought in every power,
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye;
A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind;
A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd:
Love's feeling is more soft and sensible
Than are the tender horns of cockl'd snails;
Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste:
For valour, is not Love a Hercules,
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical
As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair:
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write
Until his ink were temper'd with Love's sighs;
O, then his lines would ravish savage ears
And plant in tyrants mild humility.
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain and nourish all the world:
Else none at all in ought proves excellent.
Then fools you were these women to forswear,
Or keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools.
For wisdom's sake, a word that all men love,
Or for love's sake, a word that loves all men,
Or for men's sake, the authors of these women,
Or women's sake, by whom we men are men,
Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.
It is religion to be thus forsworn,
For charity itself fulfills the law,
And who can sever love from charity? -William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost

Random Musing
The Fall 2011 issue of Flashquake was just published. If you'd like to read my contribution to it, click here and check out page 22.

Quotation
Demetrius: Villain, what hast thou done?
Aaron: That which thou canst not undo.
Chiron: Thou hast undone our mother.
Aaron: Villain, I have done thy mother. -William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus

*For the sake of context, know that Chiron and Demetrius are just finding out that their mother, who is married to the emperor of Rome, had an affair with Aaron (a Moor who is definitely not the emperor of Rome) and just gave birth to a child who was very obviously fathered by him

Quotation
"'I just don't believe people are happy anymore, not like they used to be. You never see a happy face, at least I don't.'" -Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Quotations
"'I like adventures, and I’m going to find some.'" -Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

"'Think for a minute, darling: in fairy tales it's always the children who have the fine adventures. The mothers have to stay at home and wait for the children to fly in the window.'" -Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

"'…to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

"'And now, Harry, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

"'Don't adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story. Well, it can't be helped.'" -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Quotation
"'I think she is growing up, and so begins to dream dreams, and have hopes and fears and fidgets, without knowing why or being able to explain them.'" -Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

Random Musing
About a month ago, From the Depths accepted a poem written in memory of Erica Teevens and Chip Switzer. The poem is currently being featured on their web page, you can read it here.

Quotation
"Friends can make you feel that the world is smaller and less sneaky than it really is…" -Lemony Snicket, The Austere Academy

Quotation
"…Then they both felt better. It was so wonderful to be young and sad together." -L.M. Montgomery, Pat of Silver Bush

Quotations
"'I'm so glad you're here, Anne,' said Miss Lavendar, nibbling at her candy. 'If you weren't I should be blue…very blue…almost navy blue. Dreams and make-believes are all very well in the daytime and the sunshine, but when dark and storm come they fail to satisfy. One wants real things then. But you don't know this…seventeen never knows it. At seventeen dreams do satisfy because you think the realities are waiting for you further on.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlead

"And after breakfast there was an hour when Jane discovered that the hardest work in the world is waiting." -L.M. Montgomery, Jane of Lantern Hill

"…for action is always easier than quiet waiting." -Louisa May Alcott, Jo's Boys

"'…when people are waiting, they are bad judges of time, and every half minute seems like five.'" -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

"'I waited. I listened. Nothing came, nothing, I cried then with a sudden conviction of complete desertion, Now there is nothing. No fin breaks the waste of this immeasurable sea. Life has destroyed me. No echo comes when I speak, no varied words. This is more truly death than the death of friends, than the death of youth. I am the swathed figure in the hairdresser's shop taking up only so much space.'" -Virginia Woolf, The Waves

"Away down into the shadowy depth of the Real I once lived.
I thought that to seem was to be.
But the waters of Marah were beautiful, yet they were bitter.
I waited, and hoped, and prayed;
Counting the heart-throbs and the tears that answered them.
Through my earnest pleadings for the True, I learned that the mildest mercy of life was a smiling sneer;
And that the business of the world was to lash with vengeance all who dared to be what their God had made them.
Smother back tears to the red blood of the heart!
Crush out things called souls!
No room for them here!…" -Adah Isaacs Menken, "Myself"

"…She had to decide.

Do you wait for god to tell you what to do.

Or do you panic." -Kazim Ali, "Carlisle"

Quotation
"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.'" -Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There

Random Musing
A little over a year ago, I wrote a blog post recommending that my followers give The Soloists a listen. They're a band from Novi, Michigan composed of two super nice and talented guys, and I'm thrilled to be able to report that they have just released a new EP titled Before You Go. I think it's their best EP to date - which is high praise coming from a Soloists superfan - and honestly believe you'd be doing yourself a favor in buying it. So go ahead and click on that link - you will not be sorry.

Oh, and just in case the chance to add some excellent new songs to your music library isn't enough enticement for you, half of the proceeds from the album's sales will be donated to St. Francis Inn in memory of Chip Switzer. So you can feel good about your decision to buy the album on multiple levels. Now go click on that link. Go. Now. Do it.

Quotation
"If there is such a thing as complete happiness, it is knowing that you are in the right place…" -Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Quotation
"He's a better person when she's around, and isn't that what friends are for, to raise you up and keep you at your best?" -David Nicholls, One Day

Quotation
"'I have never known what it was to separate esteem and love.'" -Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

Random Musing
Anomalous Press published the first five poems of my chapbook she wears grey in their latest issue. You can read the poems - as well as listen to me reading them - here.

Random Musing
I had a poem featured on The 22 Magazine's blog today.

Quotation
"Her deprivation had been not having any dreams of her own at all." -Toni Morrison, Beloved

Quotation
"Their friendship was like a wilted bunch of flowers that she insisted on topping up with water. Why not let it die instead? It was unrealistic to expect a friendship to last forever…" -David Nicholls, One Day

Quotation
"'The happiness of one man and one woman is the greatest thing in all the world.'"
-Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Quotation
"'…love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go…'" -Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

Quotation
"'My predecessor was the one who knew most about all of this.  It took him seven years to get a general sense of what was going on.  Life is unbearably sad, don't you think?'" -Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (Translated by Natasha Wimmer)

Random Musing
Phantom Kangaroo accepted one of my poems a couple weeks ago. As of yesterday issue no. 10 is up on the site; you can go here to read my poem.

When I first received the acceptance email I was really excited about having another poem published and out there for the world to see. But my excitement's been tempered by recent events. I'm just not quite in the mood to celebrate. Or maybe I just don't like this idea of life simply going on in the face of tragedy - even if I know that is of course how the world works. It feels like everyone should sit and mourn for a while before going on with life as usual; as if moving forward so quickly is disrespectful (and no, I'm not sure what "moving forward" even means exactly). I know that's all pretty irrational, but it's how I'm feeling right now.

Anyhow, just wanted to share my first online publication with my faithful readers.

Quotations
"'Dead?' said Sophie. She had a silly impulse to add, But she was alive an hour ago! And she stopped herself, because death is like that: people are alive until they die." -Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle

"'Among the tortures and devastations of life is this then — our friends are not able to finish their stories.'" -Virginia Woolf, The Waves

Random Musing
And once again, I find that Diana Wynne Jones' quote about death is spot on and sadly appropriate for the times. Chip Switzer, another Novi High School alum, passed away yesterday. He died peacefully in his sleep. He was twenty years old. He wasn't my friend, but he was an unfailingly kind person, and his passing away so suddenly is yet another (and at this point unnecessary) reminder of this world's constant, torturous transience. My thoughts and prayers are with his friends and family.

Quotation
"My friend has gone away from me
From shadow into perfect light,
But leaving a sweet legacy.
My heart shall hold it long in fee—
A grand ideal, calm and bright,
A song of hope for ministry,
A faith of unstained purity,
A thought of beauty for delight—
These did my friends bequeath to me;
And, more than even these can be,
The worthy pattern of a white,
Unmarred life lived most graciously.
Dear comrade, loyal thanks to thee
Who now hath fared beyond my sight,
My friend has gone away from me,
But leaving a sweet legacy." -L.M. Montgomery, "My Legacy"

Random Musing
I ran across that poem in The Watchman and Other Poems a few months ago and my mind immediately went to Erica Teevens. It just seemed so incredibly apt. That's why I copy down quotes from everything I read - it's so nice to run across something, anything that manages so succinctly to express thoughts and feelings you've had. Cause we're all a jumble of emotion most of the time anyhow, and nothing manages to get sorted out.

Today is six months since Erica Teevens passed away. It's a rather large milestone, and for the people who were particularly close to her, it's a horrible reminder that someone very near and dear to them is no longer around and hasn't been around for so many months. There's nothing anyone can do about the fact that time is going on and on and things are happening, and all the same Erica isn't around anymore to share in any of it. I know my sister is one of those people having a really hard time with that concept. I wish I could help, I wish I could do something or anything but in this situation there isn't anything to do really. So I'm limited to writing poems and making paintings and pulling quotes out of books thinking that at least someone out there will appreciate how perfectly writers like J.D. Salinger and L.M. Montgomery and Virginia Woolf were able to express how they're feeling. Cause I guess that's the only thing anyone can do for those people hurting so much right now: actually understand that terrible lonely ache and so somehow manage to make them feel a little less alone.

Quotations
"'Never take advice!'" -Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

"Amy's lecture did Laurie good, though, of course, he did not own it till long afterward. Men seldom do, for when women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do. Then they act upon it, and, if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it. If it fails, they generously give her the whole." -Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

"…'All children must look after their own upbringing.'  Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands." -Anne Frank, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

"Perhaps, then, there is something to his advice that I should cease looking back so much, that I should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of what remains of my day. After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?" -Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

"'…advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise…'" -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

"If it isn't fun, don't do it.
You'll have to do enough that isn't…." -Robert Creeley, "Sad Advice"

Quotation
"'Dexter, I love you so much. So, so much, and I probably always will.' Her lips touched his cheek. 'I just don't like you anymore. I'm sorry.'" -David Nicholls, One Day

Quotations
"Besides, doesn't everybody know that it doesn't make a mite of difference how a love-letter is spelled?" -L.M. Montgomery, Magic for Marigold

"…but her Letters were always unsatisfactory, and though she did not openly avow her feelings, yet every line proved her to be Unhappy." -Jane Austen, "Catharine, or the Bower"

"'Letters are no matter of indifference; they are generally a very positive curse.'" -Jane Austen, Emma

"Every body at all addicted to letter writing, without having much to say, which will include a large proportion of the female world at least…" -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

"'Every body allows that the talent of writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female.'" -Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

"…as if letters couldn't lie.  But Philip knew better than that, sprawling his thanks across a page to Aunt Alice who had given him a teddy bear he was too old for.  Letter could lie all right, but they made the lie permanent.  They lay as evidence against you: they made you meaner than the spoken word." -Graham Greene, "The Basement Room"

"Letters, like compilation tapes, were really vehicles for unexpressed emotions…" -David Nicholls, One Day

"John Donne said more than kisses, letters mingle souls and so they do…" -Zadie Smith, White Teeth

Quotation
"'If you're my friend I should be able to talk to you but I can't, and if I can't talk to you, well, what is the point of you? Of us?'" -David Nicholls, One Day

Quotation
"The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. He had a powerful kind of ache inside him, half joy, half terrible sadness." -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Quotation
"'I'm afraid that if my dream is realized, I'll have no reason to go on living.'" -Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist (Translated by Alan R. Clarke)

Quotation
"…never made the mistake of thinking gaiety was happiness…" -L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

Quotation
"'Does color make you sort of dizzy?' asked Rebecca.
'No,' answered Emma Jane after a long pause; 'no, it don't; not a mite.'
'Perhaps dizzy isn't just the right word, but it's nearest. I'd like to eat color, and drink it, and sleep in it.'" -Kate Douglas Wiggins, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

Painting
Untitled

*Available for purchase on Etsy

Quotation
"'You feel, I suppose, that, in losing Isabella, you lose half yourself: you feel a void in your heart which nothing else can occupy.  Society is becoming irksome; and as for the amusements in which you were wont to share at Bath, the very idea of which without her is abhorrent.  You would not, for instance, now go to a ball for the world.  You feel that you have no longer any friend to whom you can speak with unreserve; on whose regard you can place dependence; or whose counsel, in any difficult, you could rely on.'" -Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Quotations
"Little, silly, dreamy, happy, ignorant Fourteen! Always thinking that something great and wonderful and beautiful lay in the years ahead." -L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

"'Her ignorance made the unknown infinitely vast.'" -Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

"The comforts of ignorance seemed utterly denied her." -Virginia Woolf, Orlando

"Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives." -Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Quotation
"'Words are the source of misunderstandings.'" -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince (Translated by Katherine Woods)

Quotations
"'I have been careless, and so have been thwarted by luck and chance, those wreckers of all but the best laid plans.'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

"He wanted to tell them what that meant to him, but he simply could not find words important enough." -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

"'All's fair in love and war,' said Ron brightly, 'and this is a bit of both.'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

"It was not, after all, so easy to die." -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

"…their presence was his courage, and the reason he was able to keep putting one foot in front of the other." -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

"'It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

"'Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love.'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

"'Tell me one last thing,' said Harry. 'Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?'
Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry's ears even though the bright mist was descending again, obscuring his figure.
'Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Random Musing
When the first Harry Potter film came out, I was eleven years old and already in love with the book series. I went to see the movie with my family and, even at the very young age of eleven, it disappointed me. I didn't see another Harry Potter movie in theaters until Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out and my mom decided (after seeing a well-done trailer) that she wanted to see it. We went and to my surprise I found myself really enjoying the movie. From there began the slow shift in my view of the movie series.

I went from being a vocal detractor of the Harry Potter movies to really appreciating them for their own merits. They're entertaining movies which do a fair job of adapting complicated material. Could they be better? Yes. Should you read the books instead of watching the movies? Yes. Are they very fun to watch despite not being nearly as good as their source material? Yes.

My opinion that the movies simply need to be fun and entertaining, as opposed to legitimately good, changed slightly with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. Here was a genuinely good movie - not just for a Harry Potter movie, but simply as a movie on its own terms. I absolutely loved the film - thought it was a phenomenal adaptation, and I've watched it many many times. It's my favorite of the Harry Potter films, and because of how much I like it my expectations for the final film were astronomical. The other movies in the series could stay simply entertaining, but Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was going to be adapted into two genuinely wonderful films.

And so last night, like so many other people, I went to the midnight premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 expecting an amazing epic finale to the series. Unlike so many other people though, I don't think I loved the film. I say "think" because I need to see the movie one more time to decide how I really feel about it.

I was expecting a movie that would be just as good as Part 1. Personally I don't believe that the movie managed that gargantuan task. The pacing felt overly manic to me, deaths were (oddly) not treated with the respect or gravitas I was expecting, and special effects took over characters. This isn't to say that Part 2 isn't a good movie. I believe it is. There are some very well-done moments and it's entertaining and fun to watch in the same way most Harry Potter films are. I have no qualms about paying to see it again in theaters. However, is it what I wanted it to be? No. Did it live up to my expectations? No. And do I agree with Rotten Tomatoes (and apparently the public audience at large) that it is the best of the Harry Potter films? A very firm "no."

Quotations
"'It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that.'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

"'…to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

"'…humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them.'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

"'…the best of us must sometimes eat our words.'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

"'It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

"'Curiosity is not a sin,' he said. 'But we should exercise caution with our curiosity…'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

"'Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young…and I seem to have forgotten lately….'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

"'I don't mean to be rude — ' he began, in a tone that threatened rudeness in every syllable.
'— yet, sadly, accidental rudeness occurs alarmingly often,' Dumbledore finished the sentence gravely. 'Best to say nothing at all, my dear man.'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

"'And now, Harry, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

"'Dumbledore says people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right,' said Hermione." -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

"'Ah, Harry, how often this happens, even between the best of friends! Each of us believes that what he has to say is much more important than anything the other might have to contribute!'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

"'It is natural to be afraid…'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

"'Killing is not nearly as easy as the innocent believe…'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

"'…I'm the one with the wand…you're at my mercy…'
'No, Draco,' said Dumbledore quietly. 'It is my mercy, and not yours, that matters now.'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

"'It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

"'Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love.'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

"'Tell me one last thing,' said Harry. 'Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?'
Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry's ears even though the bright mist was descending again, obscuring his figure.
'Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Quotations
"'I hope you're pleased with yourself. We could all have been killed — or worse, expelled.'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

"'What happened down in the dungeons between you and Professor Quirrell is a complete secret, so, naturally, the whole school knows.'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

"'Broaden your minds, my dears, and allow your eyes to see past the mundane!…'"
-J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

"Professor Trelawney behaved almost normally until the very end of Christmas dinner, two hours later. Full to bursting with Christmas dinner and still wearing their party hats, Harry and Ron got up first from the table and she shrieked loudly.
'My dears! Which of you left his seat first? Which?'
'Dunno,' said Ron, looking uneasily at Harry.
'I doubt it will make much difference,' said Professor McGonagall coldly, 'unless a mad axe-man is waiting outside the doors to slaughter the first into the entrance hall.'
Even Ron laughed. Professor Trelawney looked highly affronted." -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

"'Harry Potter will do the task!' squeaked the elf. 'Dobby knew Harry Potter had not found the right book, so Dobby did it for him!'
'What?' said Harry. 'But you don't know what the second task is —'
'Dobby knows, sir! Harry Potter has to go into the lake and find his Wheezy —'
'Find my what?'
'— and take his Wheezy back from the merpeople!'
'What's a Wheezy?'
'Your Wheezy, sir, your Wheezy — Wheezy who is giving Dobby his sweater!'"
-J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

"Hermione yawned widely and poured herself some coffee. She looked mildly pleased about something, and when Ron asked her what she had to be so happy about, she simply said, 'The hats have gone. Seems the house-elves do want freedom after all.'
'I wouldn't bet on it,' Ron told her cuttingly. 'They might not count as clothes. They didn't look anything like hats to me, more like woolly bladders.'
Hermione did not speak to him all morning." -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

"…'Well, you have!' she said. 'And you won't look at any of us!'
'It's you lot who won't look at me!' said Harry angrily.
'Maybe you're taking it in turns to look and keep missing each other,' suggested Hermione, the corners of her mouth twitching." -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

"'And from now on, I don't care if my tea leaves spell die, Ron, die — I'm just chucking them in the bin where they belong.'" -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Random Musing
In honor of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 coming out this Friday, let's have some Harry Potter posts for the next few days.

Quotation
"All the same, without being morbid, and giving way to—to memories and so on, I must confess that there does seem to me something sad in life. It is hard to say what it is. I don't mean the sorrow that we all know, like illness and poverty and death. No, it is something different. It is there, deep down, deep down, part of one, like one's breathing. However hard I work and tire myself I have only to stop to know it is there, waiting. I often wonder if everybody feels the same. One can never know. But isn't it extraordinary that under his sweet, joyful little singing it was just this sadness—ah, what is it? —that I heard?" -Katherine Mansfield, "The Canary"

Painting
Untitled

Quotation
"It is so beautiful, so exciting, this love, that I tremble on the verge of it, and offer, quite out of my own habit, to look for a brooch on a beach; also it is the stupidest, the most barbaric of human passions, and turns a nice young man with a profile like a gem (Paul's was exquisite) into a bully with a crowbar (he was swaggering, he was insolent) in the Middle End Road.  Yet, she said to herself, from the dawn of time odes have been sung to love; wreaths heaped and roses; and if you asked nine people out of ten they would say they wanted nothing but this; while the women, judging from her own experience, would all the time be feeling, This is not what we want; there is nothing more tedious, puerile, and inhumane than love; yet it is also beautiful and necessary." -Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Quotations
"Hermione yawned widely and poured herself some coffee. She looked mildly pleased about something, and when Ron asked her what she had to be so happy about, she simply said, 'The hats have gone. Seems the house-elves do want freedom after all.'
'I wouldn't bet on it,' Ron told her cuttingly. 'They might not count as clothes. They didn't look anything like hats to me, more like woolly bladders.'
Hermione did not speak to him all morning." -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

"1
There is a hole in the garden. It is empty. I envy it.

Emptiness: the only freedom there is
In a fallen world…" -Jay Hopler, "And the Sunflower Weeps for the Sun, Its Flower"

Lorelai: Oh, he's totally fine having his personal freedom slowly stripped away as long as he's completely unaware that it's happening. Just like a true American. -Gilmore Girls (Episode 6.13: Friday Night's Alright For Fighting)

Random Musing
I know these aren't exactly fitting for the 4th of July (except for the very last one, ha), but they're the only quotes I have that had anything at all to do with "freedom."

Quotations
"…instead of the misery and disillusion of sixty odd years of mental vacuum, of physical squalor, I would spare them all by ending everything at the height of my so-called career while there were still illusions left among my profs, still poems to be published in Harper's, still a memory at least that would be worthwhile." -Sylvia Plath, Letters Home

"But the peculiarity of these two strong memories is that each was very simple.  I am hardly aware of myself, but only of the sensation.  I am only the container of the feeling of ecstasy, of the feeling of rapture.  Perhaps this is characteristic of all childhood memories; perhaps it accounts for their strength.  Later we add to feelings much that makes them more complex; and therefore less strong; or if not less strong, less isolated, less complete." -Virginia Woolf, A Sketch of the Past

"He smiled the most exquisite smile, veiled by memory, tinged by dreams." -Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

"Anyways, these ideas or feelings or ramblings had their satisfactions.  They turned the pain of others into memories of one's own.  They turned pain, which is natural, enduring, and eternally triumphant, into personal memory, which is human, brief, and eternally elusive." -Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (Translated by Natasha Wimmer)

"Nothing told her anything, except one thing — unless she had lost her memory, she had lost her way." -Elizabeth Bowen, "The Inherited Clock"

"'…I shall sit with my memories. I expect to spend some time getting to know them.'" -Elizabeth Bowen, "The Inherited Clock"

"'People's memories are very short — a lucky thing, I always think.'" -Agatha Christie, "The Thumbmark of St. Peter"

"Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory." -James Joyce, "The Dead"

"No memory of the past touched him, for his mind was full of a present joy." -James Joyce, "A Little Cloud"

"He began to doubt the reality of what memory told him." -James Joyce, "A Painful Case"

"I liked the man. He was lean with memories." -Jack Kerouac, On the Road

"My memory is a goddamn liar." -Elizabeth McCracken, An Exact Replica of a Figment                                                                               of My Imagination

"It is only my memory that holds me here. Time, let me vanish. Then what we separate by our very presence can come together." -Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

"…It had been made for happy remembering
By people who were still too young
To have learned about memory…" -Ted Hughes, "A Short Film"

Random Musing
I don't think a post about "memory" would be complete without the following video:

Quotation
"'But don't you think,' I persist, 'that it's better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?'" -Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

Quotation
"It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting…" -Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist (Translated by Alan R. Clarke)

Quotation
"…in search of some elusive word or phrase which might best describe the indescribable." -L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl

Quotation
"'I did not mean to quarrel,' said Rosamond, putting on her hat.
'Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?'" -George Eliot, Middlemarch

Quotation
"And, in that mood, he was grateful to be in love. When you are in love, things make even more sense, he thought." -Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist (Translated by Alan R. Clarke)

Quotation
"Baines wasn't really happy; he was only watching happiness from close to instead of from far away." -Graham Greene, "The Basement Room"

Quotation
"'You have to protect yourself from sadness. Sadness is very close to hate.'" -Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

Quotations
"Oh, mother, if only you knew how I am forging a soul! How fortunate to have these two years! I am fighting, fighting, and I am making a self, in great pain, often, as for a birth, but it is right that it should be so, and I am being refined in the fires of pain and love." -Sylvia Plath, Letters Home

"The boy was beginning to understand that intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it's all written there." -Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist (Translated by Alan R. Clarke)

"'Souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another.'" -George Eliot, Middlemarch

"A hidden soul seemed to be flowing forth from Rosamond's fingers; and so indeed it was, since souls live on in perpetual echoes…" -George Eliot, Middlemarch

"He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet's soul. Melancholy was the dominant note of his temperament, he thought, but it was a melancholy tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and simple joy. If he could give expression to it in a book of poems perhaps men would listen." -James Joyce, "A Little Cloud"

"There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand." -Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

"It is only when one has grown old and dull that the soul is heavy and refuses to rise." -Kate Douglas Wiggins, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

"It has come to my attention that your soul is in need of saving. Well, with all of your vice and your scorn. You spend a lot of time doing bad things, don't you? You might be asking yourself. How can I get into heaven? The truth is, there is no way. There is no heaven. The answer to Man's most asked question therefore has no answer. Let me tell you a story…" -Dorothea Lasky, "Dear Friend,"

"…Once at a funeral, a man had died
And with the prayers said, his soul flew up in a hurry
Like it had been let out of something awful
It was strangely colored, that soul.
And it was a funny shape and a funny temperature.
As it blew away, all of us looking felt the cold." -Dorothea Lasky, "Love Poem"

Quotation
"'But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.'" -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince (Translated by Katherine Woods)

Quotations
"'I wonder what a soul…a person's soul…would look like,' said Priscilla dreamily.
'Like that, I should think,' answered Anne, pointing to a radiance of sifted sunlight streaming through a birch tree. 'Only with shape and features of course. I like to fancy souls as being made of light. And some are all shot through with rosy stains and quivers…and some have a soft glitter like moonlight on the sea…and some are pale and transparent like mist at dawn.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

"'I read somewhere once that souls were like flowers,' said Priscilla.
'Then your soul is a golden narcissus,' said Anne, 'and Diana's is like a red, red rose. Jane's is an apple blossom, pink and wholesome and sweet.'
'And our own is a white violet, with purple streaks in its heart,' finished Priscilla." -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

"'Anybody is liable to rheumatism in her legs, Anne. It's only old people who should have rheumatism in their souls, though. Thanks goodness, I never have. When you get rheumatism in your soul you might as well go and pick out your coffin.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

"She had one of those souls that are always tied to the stake, burning in the suffering of the world around them." -L.M. Montgomery, Rilla of Ingleside

"The body grows slowly and steadily but the soul grows by leaps and bounds. It may come to its full stature in an hour." -L.M. Montgomery, Rilla of Ingleside

"'Lord, Lord!' he said to himself out loud, stretching and opening his eyes. 'The death of the soul.' The words attached themselves to some scene, to some room, to some past he had been dreaming of. It became clearer; the scene, the room, the past he had been dreaming of." -Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

"…but it was her manner that annoyed him; timid; hard; something arrogant; unimaginative; prudish. 'The death of the soul.' He had said that instinctively, ticketing that moment as he used to do — the death of her soul." -Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

"'Better lose your life than your soul…'" -Louisa May Alcott, Jo's Boys

"…I have a knocking woodpecker in my heart and I think I have three souls
One for love one for poetry and one for acting out my insane self
Not insane but boring but perpendicular but untrue but true
The three rarely sing together take my hand it's active
The active ingredient in it is a touch…" -Kenneth Koch, "Alive for an Instant"

Quotation
"'…but there are very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement.'" -Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Quotation
Hamlet: O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and
count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that
I have bad dreams.
Guildenstern: Which dreams indeed are ambition, for
the very substance of the ambitious is merely the
shadow of a dream.
Hamlet: A dream itself is but a shadow. -William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Quotation
"'Jane, the most awful as well as the most beautiful things in the world can be said in three words or less…I love you…he is gone…he is come…she is dead…too late…and life is illumined or ruined.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Jane of Lantern Hill

Quotation
"Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love." -Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Quotation
"'If you can concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man.'" -Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist (Translated by Alan R. Clarke)

Random Musing
So you might know by now that I paint. What you probably didn't know is that I'm now selling those paintings on Etsy. Considering that I only started listing paintings about 3 days ago, I forgive you for not knowing. It'd be a bit creepy if you did know actually....

Anyhow, here is the link to my Etsy shop, in case you were curious. And in general, you should just check out the site and look at all the amazing stuff people have made. It's a fun way to spend some of that time you've been wasting on Facebook. Though I admit it could end up being sort of expensive...

Quotation
"But hers was not love compared with his." -Virginia Woolf, "The Introduction"

Random Musing
I find this quote utterly lovely. It just seems so true about love. People in love never seem to think that anyone else can understand how they feel. Plus it's just such a nice way of saying that someone feels they are hopelessly, inexpressibly in love with someone.