Seán Hewitt > Quotes

“What if it was myself, or that lost version of me, a flicker of the past — would I know his face, and would he know mine? All that time I had been haunted by him, and still I hardly knew what that self was, that version of me that existed before the world had said become, and I had answered in its language.”
― Seán Hewitt, All Down Darkness Wide

“There was desperation in his eyes. As he looked at me, it was as though he were looking into me from another world, trying to reach across some void, but everything he said was somehow falling short, not quite carrying its meaning across.”
― Seán Hewitt, All Down Darkness Wide

“When we buried him, we planted flowers on his grave, and every time I visited I saw that those flowers were my father, were made out of him. He was being born again into the earth, in a new form, and it wouldn't be long until all of his atoms were dispersed across the village, then the country, and then the world, carried off inside birds, growing into plants, and into butterflies. What was the garden, then, if not heaven, if not a place made up of everything that had been lost to us, if not an afterlife? After that, the whole world could be heaven to me.”
― Seán Hewitt, All Down Darkness Wide

“Perhaps I was so steeped in love, had woven its mythologies through my mind for so long, that when it arrived in reality I could not recognise it. Love confused me, bewildered me, tore me apart, but not because it was not love, but because I thought it was a fake, some unreal version that did not accord with the love I had dreamt alone.”
― Seán Hewitt, Open, Heaven

“It was a paradox, really – I was afraid of men, but I only felt really safe if one of them was on my side.”
― Seán Hewitt, Open, Heaven

“That early sense of shame went underground: in protecting myself, in choosing which parts of myself to hide and which to magnify, I fragmented myself. I made a hierarchy of each facet of my identity, and at the bottom of the shaky, unstable tower I called 'myself' there was a little locked box.”
― Seán Hewitt, All Down Darkness Wide

“I had come to find love, its vision, its company, to be changed by it... knowing that it would deplete me as much as it sustained, that it would torture me as much as it made life... worth living.”
― Seán Hewitt, Open, Heaven

“It was like walking through a folk song that afternoon — the blackbirds and the thrushes, the sweetness of the flowers, the boy I loved, and who might even love me, waiting for me between the trees.”
― Seán Hewitt, Open, Heaven

“Hush, Eryximachus. Don’t interrupt me, or laugh at what I am saying. It isn’t only aimed at Pausanias and Agathon. True, those two men may be of the kind I am talking about, and are both masculine by nature – but what I am saying applies to everyone, the whole human race. This is how we will become happy, by allowing Love to reach its journey’s end, so that each of us might find our beloved and restore our original nature.”
― Seán Hewitt, 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World

“Krehká podstata šťastia spočíva v tom, že nikdy netrvá dlho,... s. 208”
― Seán Hewitt, All Down Darkness Wide

“Perhaps I was so steeped in love, woven its mythologies through my mind for so long, that when it arrived in reality I could not recognize it.”
― Seán Hewitt, Open, Heaven

“This is why all of us should urge each other to worship the gods, so that we may escape that fate and follow, instead, Love as our guide and our leader. No one should go contrary to Love. Anyone who does is despised by the gods. Only by becoming friends of the gods, by reconciling ourselves with them, will we discover our own beloveds.”
― Seán Hewitt, 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World

“Hyacinthus might have had a similar fate to Ganymede, had it not been for a brutal misfortune.”
― Seán Hewitt, 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World

“After all, there is no conversation worth the name if it does not come from a place of affection.”
― Seán Hewitt, 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World

“Omdat ik nu eenmaal was wie ik ben, had ik al vroeg de heimelijke tactieken van het conformisme begrepen: hoe je een slis verhult, een al te uitgesproken tred corrigeert, je stem een paar tonen lager zet, zaken waarin ik me tijdens mijn puberteit wekenlang oefende op mijn kamer. Maar het was pas op mijn zeventiende dat ik, vrij frontaal, op een non-conformiteit stuitte waar ik me niet zomaar uit kon wurmen. Ik besefte toen, duidelijker dan ooit te voren, hoezeer de wereld me - nog voor ikzelf het begreep - in aangeboren tegenstelling had geplaatst. (P15)”
― Seán Hewitt, All Down Darkness Wide

“It makes my heart flutter, my chest uneasy to watch the two of you. I try to speak, but my voice is lost with the sight of you.”
― Seán Hewitt, 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World

“The exuberant frankness of the Greeks and Romans makes a mockery of how narrow our popular vision is, even now.”
― Seán Hewitt, 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World

“And it isn’t only the most warlike nations, the Cretans and the Boeotians and the Spartans, who are the most amorous, or the most susceptible to love, but the great old heroes too: Meleager, Achilles, Aristomenes, Cimon and Epaminondas. In fact, Epaminondas loved two young men. Their names were Asopichus and Caphisodorus. Caphisodorus died with Epaminondas at Mantinea and is buried by his side, and Asopichus was such a fierce warrior that the man who eventually killed him won honours from the Phocians.”
― Seán Hewitt, 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World

“The king of the gods once burned with love for a youth named Ganymede. Jupiter searched the world for a form to take, and lighted on a bird – but no sparrow, no, only an eagle would do. Only an eagle could carry the god’s electric bolts of lightning, and so he flew, on lying wings, and swooped down on the clefted air and stole the handsome boy, who now, despite the anger of Juno, mixes the god’s nectar and pours it into Jupiter’s cup.”
― Seán Hewitt, 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World

“He knew that Love is the only invincible general; for men in battle will desert their tribesmen and relatives and even, god knows, their children and their parents; but no enemy can drive themselves between a lover and his beloved.”
― Seán Hewitt, 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World

“His mind is wounded by love, and yearns for the one who dealt the blow, just as a soldier falls in the direction of the wounding sword or a gash spurts blood towards its inflictor. So, someone pierced with the dart of Venus – whether by a boy with svelte and girlish limbs, or by a woman – turns to the source of his hurt, and longs for union, longs to shoot his seed. The images of desire are urgent and sweet. Though they are wordless, they speak of many joys to come.”
― Seán Hewitt, 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World

“When you die, as you will beneath the walls of Troy, let us be buried together, let us blend – as we did when we were boys – into one.”
― Seán Hewitt, 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World

“Why not get some work done? Surely, sad shepherd, if Alexis won’t come, surely you’ll find another?”
― Seán Hewitt, 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World

“When they said, 'I'm just scared that you'll be unhappy', what I really felt they were saying was 'I am scared that if you continue being yourself, we will make you unhappy.”
― Seán Hewitt, All Down Darkness Wide

“It is for lovers alone that Hades ceases to be implacable. So, my friend, although it is a good thing to be initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, I say that the celebrants of Love’s mysteries have a better place in Hades.”
― Seán Hewitt, 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World

“When a lover of boys, or any other type of person, meets the one who is their other half, each is overwhelmed with friendship and kinship and desire, and they can hardly bear to be separated for even a small amount of time. These are the people who will spend whole lifetimes together. They can hardly say what they wish for themselves when the other is absent. No one could be so mistaken as to think that it is for sex alone that these couples love each other: the soul of each of them, like a holy oracle, sings and desires something beyond words.”
― Seán Hewitt, 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World

“As for Heracles, it would take too long for me to list all his loves. Even to this day, lovers worship and honour Iolaüs, exchanging vows over his tomb, believing him to have been beloved by Heracles. Some also say that Heracles saved the life of Alcestis to please Admetus, her husband, who had been one of Heracles’ beloveds. They also say that Apollo loved Admetus, and served him every day for a year.”
― Seán Hewitt, 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World

“If he has Eros with him, he is ready, at the call of his friend, ‘to cross through fire and rough seas and through the winds themselves’.”
― Seán Hewitt, 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World

“Sorry for the interruption, everyone. Now, where was I? Ah yes, you, Callias. Everyone in the city knows you’re in love with Autolycus. Actually, I think that news has gone overseas, too, thanks to your fathers both being famous, and you both being distinguished gents yourselves. I’ve always admired your character, Callias, but now I admire it even more. I can see that Autolycus is not a spoilt man, and is not ruined by effeminacy. Anyone who looks at him can see how strong, brave and disciplined he is, and that’s a testament to your love, too, and shows that you are attracted to the right qualities in a man.”
― Seán Hewitt, 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World

“Corydon is alone, without a lover, and the contrast between his longing and the silent figure of Alexis gives the poem a striking poignancy, built as it is around an absence.”
― Seán Hewitt, 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World