alfie

“This is why people cry at the movies: because everybody’s doomed. No one in a movie can help themselves in any way. Their fate has already staked its claim on them from the moment they appear onscreen.”
― John Darnielle, Wolf in White Van

“Love has never been a popular movement. And no one's ever wanted, really, to be free. The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people. Otherwise, of course, you can despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you've got to remember is what you're looking at is also you. Everyone you're looking at is also you. You could be that person. You could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide, in yourself, not to be.”
― James Baldwin

“If someone is consummately beautiful and ordinary, why is he the only one capable of inspiring fantasy? I’ve never told you, I was never happy, never ever, only in a few moments, but in the end I did see beauty. You’ll ask what that’s good for. It doesn’t need to accomplish anything, it’s enough in itself. I’ve see so many other things, but they were never enough. The mind doesn’t move any other mind, only ones of the same mind, I’m sorry, I know you consider beauty to be the lesser of the two, but it does move the mind and spirit.”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, Malina

“Tanner: My dear Tavy, your pious English habit of regarding the world as a moral gymnasium built expressly to strengthen your character in leads you to think about your own confounded principles when you should be thinking about other people's necessities.”
― Bernard Shaw