kelly — ♡

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”
― Franz Kafka

“Bury me, my love, and take a lock of my hair with you. Carry me through the centuries. I think I'd like to share, just a little, in what immortality is like.”
― Cassandra Khaw, The Salt Grows Heavy

“Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything,”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“And so, being young and dipt in folly
I fell in love with melancholy,
And used to throw my earthly rest
And quiet all away in jest—
I could not love except where Death
Was mingling his with Beauty's breath—
Or Hymen, Time, and Destiny
Were stalking between her and me.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Stories and Poems