Mark Beauregard > Quotes

“This fever of longing is not love, he thought, it is the opposite of love. It is the separation from love that burns like the fires of hell.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“Asking the question matters more than finding the answer.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“He seemed not to need mere physical sustenance anymore, surviving instead on a spiritual alchemy of memory and desire.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“And now that Thanksgiving has passed, I will take a moonlight ramble through the woods – yes, the city has its culture and cafes, and the sea has its drama, but for now give me the fallen leaves and rolling hills and the smell of the earth after a rain! Give me that over all the operas on earth, so long as I can harpoon whales with my pen!”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“Must we submit eternally to male tyranny?”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“I have negotiated with cannibals in foreign tongues and Arabian sea captains and French criminals. I have bartered with demons and angels! I am not about to let a country doctor take advantage of me.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“Original sin is a very commercial idea,” said Duyckinck. “How do you think the Bible stays in print year after year?”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“He suddenly saw the enterprise of literature as essentially mad.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“Maria said, “Penmanship is no laughing matter, Miss Field.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“For the first time in as long as he could remember, a finger of light, like the first ray of dawn, shone into the dark cavern of his soul.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“... the simplicity of pure emotion saves one from the complicated thoughts that can lead to damnation.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“Destroying oneself, he thought ruefully, should always be done at a deliberate pace.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“I have been considering the possibility that the facts that can be ascertained about this cheese fail to satisfy because the facts themselves mask a metaphysical truth that can be known only through the transcendent, poetic expression of the cheddar. That is, though the world itself can never truly be known, one might begin to know some truth about the world through a metaphysical cheese”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“One sometimes must sail with the wind and sometimes against it, but the important thing is to keep your sails full.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“Melville to Hawthorne: "In your stories, you seem to understand that the dramatic moments come not when a character must choose between right and wrong buy when he must choose between two wrongs.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“There is mystery in everything,” Herman whispered, almost to himself. “And so there is poetry in everything. Even something as monstrous as a whale. But how to unlock its poetry.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“The idea of God as an immense tortoise – deliberate, reptilian, silent, and hard shelled – cheered him.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“New books feel special," said Hawthorne. "They're like babies born into the skin of old men.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“When your appetite is sharpened by persistent failure and frosty despair, a warm bowl of Hope is just the thing to set your mind and spirit right.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“To be honest with you, Melville, I sometimes don’t have the faintest idea what I’m trying to say with my damned allegories. I feel as if I’m writing with invisible ink.”
...
[...] Even if the world presses it by, you shall have at least one avid reader who will enjoy it immensely. And I am a special reader, you must remember: I can read between the lines on the page and I see invisible ink, as well. Nothing escapes me!”
― Mark Beauregard

“Because I have eyes to see, as well, and if you continue to carry on so brazenly, others will be forced out of their blindness. You will end up tarred and feathered, or worse.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“Because, in your stories, you seem to understand that true dramatic moments come not when a character must choose between right and wrong but when he must choose between two wrongs.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“You wish to be my lover. That's the name for it. But I am a stranger to that form of love."
...
"I am not as steady as I may appear," said Hawthorne.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“Farmers know that there are goodly harvests which ripen late, especially when the grain is strong.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“[...] let it be said that I am the most reverent shaman in the New World, about other matters spiritual and divine, let others be the judge! [...] soon the true literature of this sleepy nation will shine out from the starry constellations of the Berkshires.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“He had never heard the term absolute love before. Unconditional love, yes – an equally impossible concept – but absolute? He turned it over his mind: it seemed more aggressive than grace, more demanding than acceptance, the complete opposite of resignation, something austere and grand – even literary.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“But how could such a great admiration be wrong ? How could it be a sin to wonder the halls of eachother’s imaginations together, discovering and building new rooms there ?”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“Just accept the mystery. Explain the whale until there is nothing left to explain and express your soul until there is nothing left to express, and know that both remain mysterious.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“I hate being the holder of secrets or the bearer of gossip – thinking that people are hiding something all the time makes one liable to superstitious fancies, which is bad for the digestion.”
“I dare say. Though it would be a man of extraordinary moral fortitude who never had anything to hide.”
“If you never do anything dishonorable, you never have anything to hide,” said Holmes. “Where is the extraordinary moral fortitude in that?”
“[...] If I’d wanted to talk nonsense, I would have stayed at Harvard.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“If we are to be friends,” Herman said, “you must not say such things to me. You know that I love you, and you cannot toy with my affections. I will go mad.”
...
“I know that you are unlike anyone I have ever met. When I am around you, I feel at liberty to express myself completely as I see fit, beacause I am quite sure you will understand me. It’s a freedom I have longed for, but I also know that what you want from me, I cannot give.”
― Mark Beauregard