otto

“Zwischen Immer und Nie. Zwischen Immer und Nie. Between always and never.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Forget them. Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown I back, throat to the stars, "more like deer than human being." To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“You're up early," I said.
"I always rise early. The morning is the best time for me to work."
I glanced at the books. "What are you going, Greek?"
Henry set the cup back into its saucer. "A translation of Paradise Lost."
"Into what language?"
"Latin," he said solemly.
"Hmm," I said. "Why?"
"I am interested to see what I will wind up with. Milton to my way of thinking is our greatest English poet, greater than Shakespeare, but I think in some ways it was unfortunate that he chose to write in English — of course, he wrote a not inconsiderable amount of poetry in Latin, but that was early, in his student days; what I'm referring to is the later work. In Paradise Lost he pushes English to its very limits but I think no language without noun cases could possible support the structural order he attempts to impose. He laid his cigarette back into the ashtray.”
― Donna Tartt