Hauntingly Beautiful Quotes

“Like almost every truly horrible thing that has ever happened in the history of our world, the end also began with a kiss.”
― Dennis Sharpe, Destroyer of Worlds

“And what is death, if not a face at peace - its artistic perfection.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Despair

“Footnote 164: "I finally hooked up with Ashley. I went over to her place yesterday morning. Early. She lives in Venice. Her eyebrows look like flakes of sunlight. Her smile, I'm sure, burnt Rome to the ground. And for the life of me I didn't know who she was or where we met... We sat down and I wanted to talk. I wanted to ask her who she was, where we'd met, been before, but she just smiled and held my hand as we lay down on the hammock and started to swing above all those dead leaves... Before I left she told me our story: where we met - Texas - kissed, but never made love and this had confused and haunted her and she had needed it before she got married which was in four months to a man she loved who made a living manufacturing TNT exclusively for a highway construction firm up in Colorado where he frequently went on business trips and where one night, drunk, angry and disappointed he had invited a hooker back to his motel room and so on and who cared and what was I doing here anyway?... I was still hurting, abandoned, drank three glasses of bourbon and fumed on some weed, then came here, thinking of voices, real and imagined, of ghosts, my ghost, of her, at long last, in this idiotic footnote, when she gently pushed me out her door and I said quietly 'Ashley' causing her to stop pushing me and ask 'yes?' her eyes bright with something she saw that I could never see though what she saw was me, and me not caring now at least knowing the truth and telling her the truth: 'I've never been to Texas.'" - House of Leaves”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“Her eyes were like the sea before a storm on the Carolina coast.”
― Kami Garcia

“Between the lines thoughts were felt. In a way words could never read.”
― Maira Cheeda

“It is only for me, that luminosity she exudes, of ethereal beauty and haunting eminence.”
― Saim .A. Cheeda

“And again there was the long road, as straight as an arrow through the shimmering wall of fog, and the sudden apparition of the solitary columns of Persepolis on the terrace that seemed surreally suspended high above the plains”
― Annemarie Schwarzenbach, Morte na Pérsia

“What were the present and future to him, he who did not fear the sandstorm? Did he know what fortune and misfortune mean, and what our tortured hearts called hope?”
― Annemarie Schwarzenbach, All the Roads Are Open: The Afghan Journey

“This sufficed: the overwhelming monument to the man who had not feared the poverty and grandeur of the steppe, so alien to all human measure. I breathed deep and tried, despite all, to salute life...”
― Annemarie Schwarzenbach, All the Roads Are Open: The Afghan Journey

“She stepped under the archway and into the graveyard, a contented sigh escaping her lips. She loved coming out here; it always felt so peaceful amongst the stones and weeds and feral cats that would wander between the graves hunting for field mice and spiders. Even though it was technically a place for the dead, being here always made Sally feel as if she were reborn.”
― Mari Mancusi, Sally's Lament