“People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up.”


“And above that, his eyes: their grey irises smattered with bits of brown and ember so that, looking at them, you could almost see, right behind you, something burning under an overcast sky. It seemed the boy was always looking at a plane wrecking itself midair. That’s what I saw that first day. And although I knew that nothing behind me was on fire, I turned back anyway and saw the coiled summer air, sputtering with heat, rise over the razed fields.”
― On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
― On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“When does a war end? When can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?”
― On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
― On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“It's a situation doomed enough to laugh at, but he thinks of what he used to tell his students. Imagine being a planet. Don't laugh, he'd tell them. Try to imagine it. Eons of loneliness, and then one day your ellipsis peaks toward that of another planet and there is a gasp of nearness. Wouldn't you try to make the most of it? Wouldn't you, too, combust and flare and explode if you had to?”
― The Shape of Water
― The Shape of Water

“Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you've been ruined.”
― On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
― On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“There was no meaning in life, and man by living served no end. It was immaterial whether he was born or not born, whether he lived or ceased to live. Life was insignificant and death without consequence. Philip exulted, as he had exulted in his boyhood when the weight of a belief in God was lifted from his shoulders: it seemed to him that the last burden of responsibility was taken from him; and for the first time he was utterly free. His insignificance was turned to power, and he felt himself suddenly equal with the cruel fate which had seemed to persecute him; for, if life was meaningless, the world was robbed of its cruelty. What he did or left undone did not matter. Failure was unimportant and success amounted to nothing. He was the most inconsiderate creature in that swarming mass of mankind which for a brief space occupied the surface of the earth; and he was almighty because he had wrenched from chaos the secret of its nothingness. Thoughts came tumbling over one another in Philip's eager fancy, and he took long breaths of joyous satisfaction. He felt inclined to leap and sing. He had not been so happy for months.
'Oh, life,' he cried in his heart, 'Oh life, where is thy sting?”
― Of Human Bondage
'Oh, life,' he cried in his heart, 'Oh life, where is thy sting?”
― Of Human Bondage

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