Lucía ✧₊∘ > Lucía ✧₊∘'s Quotes

“Anything for our Moony”
― MsKingBean89, All the Young Dudes

“She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Nabokov dijo que todas las buenas historias son cuentos de hadas. A los diecisiete, estaba preparada para ser la princesa de
alguien.”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita

“Hay una larga historia de soledad en la literatura. De la soledad como requisito previo para amar. Casi como si realmente no pudieras amar a alguien a menos que hayas estado solo y sin amor durante mucho tiempo. Al menos, si eres mujer. Casi como si este prolongado tiempo a solas fuera una purificación, prepara a una chica para ser digna del amor de un hombre. Piense en los mitos griegos, la Odisea : Calypso bailando hechicería sola en su isla, Penélope esperando veinte años a que regrese su marido errante.”
― Alisson Wood, Being Lolita

“She’d learned early that it was quicker to bond with another person over what you didn’t like than what you did, and that the easiest way to feel close to someone was to do something transgressive together. That’s why smokers always made friends.”
― Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

“Las chicas de hoy tienen una Lady Gaga, que se viste de hombre, de mujer o de filete de ternera, según le viene en gana.”
― Rosa Montero, La ridícula idea de no volver a verte

“Jude didn’t understand forgiveness. He was incapable of forgiveness because he was so addled by his own grief and grudges. This bad blood was what kept Jude’s heart pumping.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona

“But such was death - it had nothing to say.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona

“Blood was the wine of the spirit, was it not?”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona

“Perhaps hell is a tiny place, a single flame, Clod thought now. The thought moved him, and he imagined the pureness of the flame as he gazed through the darkness at the candelabra. Just one flame could contain all the evil that has come and gone. What if it were that easy to snuff it out? Would he do it? No. He would never interfere. Just the image of the white light, the way it swayed in the slow breeze floating through the manor, that was what mattered to him. If he could draw that, he thought, and make the picture move somehow, that would be interesting. He could suspend the drawing from a string and let the wind push it to and fro. Strange, he thought next, that fire hurts to the touch. Fire gives light. Shouldn’t the darkness hurt instead? Hell ought to be pure darkness. Nothingness. The thought chilled him. There was nothing to see there. He shrugged and pulled his back away from the wall, feeling his shirt stick to his skin with sweat.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona

“For if the modern mind is whimsical and discursive, the classical mind is narrow, unhesitating, relentless. It is not a quality of intelligence that one encounters frequently these days. But though I can digress with the best of them, I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty - unless she is wed to something more meaningful - is always superficial.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Are you happy here?" I said at last.
He considered this for a moment. "Not particularly," he said. "But you're not very happy where you are, either.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“There are such things as ghosts. People everywhere have always known that. And we believe in them every bit as much as Homer did. Only now, we call them by different names. Memory. The unconscious.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Could it be because it reminds us that we are alive, of our mortality, of our individual souls- which, after all, we are too afraid to surrender but yet make us feel more miserable than any other thing? But isn't it also pain that often makes us most aware of self? It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one’s own. Even more terrible, as we grow old, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them, don't you think?”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Death is the mother of beauty,” said Henry. “And what is beauty?” “Terror.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Cubitum eamus?"
"What?"
"Nothing.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Being the only female in what was basically a boys’ club must have been difficult for her. Miraculously, she didn’t compensate by becoming hard or quarrelsome. She was still a girl, a slight lovely girl who lay in bed and ate chocolates, a girl whose hair smelled like hyacinth and whose scarves fluttered jauntily in the breeze. But strange and marvelous as she was, a wisp of silk in a forest of black wool, she was not the fragile creature one would have her seem.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“It is easy to see things in retrospect. But I was ignorant then of everything but my own happiness, and I don’t know what else to say except that life itself seemed very magical in those days: a web of symbol, coincidence, premonition, omen. Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come together–my future, my past, the whole of my life–and I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say oh! oh! oh!”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Henry’s a perfectionist, I mean, really-really kind of inhuman — very brilliant, very erratic and enigmatic. He’s a stiff, cold person, Machiavellian, ascetic and he’s made himself what he is by sheer strength of will. His aspiration is to be this Platonic creature of pure rationality and that’s why he’s attracted to the Classics, and particularly to the Greeks — all those high, cold ideas of beauty and perfection.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“I hate Gucci,' said Francis.

'Do you?' said Henry, glancing up from his reverie. 'Really? I think it's rather grand.'

'Come on, Henry.'

'Well, it's so expensive, but it's so ugly too, isn't it? I think they make it ugly on purpose. And yet people buy it out of sheer perversity.'

'I don't see what you think is grand about that.'

'Anything is grand if it's done on a large enough scale,' said Henry.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“It does not do to be frightened of things about which you know nothing,” he said. “You are like children. Afraid of the dark.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“But one mustn't underestimate the primal appeal—to lose one's self, lose it utterly. And in losing it be born to the principle of continuous life, outside the prison of mortality and time.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Aristotle says in the Poetics,” said Henry, “that objects such as corpses, painful to view in themselves, can become delightful to contemplate in a work of art.” “And I believe Aristotle is correct. After all, what are the scenes in poetry graven on our memories, the ones that we love the most? Precisely these. The murder of Agamemnon and the wrath of Achilles. Dido on the funeral pyre. The daggers of the traitors and Caesar’s blood—remember how Suetonius describes his body being borne away on the litter, with one arm hanging down?” “Death is the mother of beauty,” said Henry. “And what is beauty?” “Terror.” “Well said,” said Julian. “Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.” I looked at Camilla, her face bright in the sun, and thought of that line from the Iliad I love so much, about Pallas Athene and the terrible eyes shining. “And if beauty is terror,” said Julian, “then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?” “To live,” said Camilla. “To live forever,” said Bunny, chin cupped in palm. The teakettle began to whistle.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“It was the most important night of my life,' he said calmly. 'It enabled me to do what I've always wanted most.'
'Which is?'
'To live without thinking.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“I just want you to be more you, instead of a little ball of quiet anxiety in the corner of the party.”
― Rachael Lippincott, She Gets the Girl

“Some things have to fall apart because they don't belong together, but some things belong together so much they could never break.”
― Rachael Lippincott, She Gets the Girl

“I’ve loved your daughter for six years,” Joey finally broke his silence by saying. “I can easily love her for another eighteen.”
― Chloe Walsh, Redeeming 6

“Because when you hurt, I hurt. When you burn, I go down in flames with you. We’re entwined, Joe. We’re mirrors. Don’t you get that by now?”
― Chloe Walsh, Redeeming 6

“Actually, we decided to name our son after the man who raised the both of us,” I confirmed quietly. “Because, let’s face it, the only man I ever had to show me the way was your husband.”
― Chloe Walsh, Redeeming 6