Ari

“But are you aware of the courage, the audacity which my profession requires? Very few people are gifted for it. I had the vocation. It showed very early in my capacity for deluding myself... What I corrupted was what is called the truth in favour of a marvellous world. I could always improve on the facts... The smoke issuing from Aladdin's lamp was my first smokescreen, and the lies learned from fairytales were my first perjuries. Let us say I had perverted tendencies: I believed everything I read. I never found a way to get what I wanted except by robbery.”
― Anaïs Nin, A Spy in the House of Love

“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems

“I was enchanted by the world of rock music - the way the singers could scream of good and evil, proclaim themselves angels or devils... Sometimes they seemed the pure embodiment of madness. And yet it was technologically dazzling, the intricacy of their performances. It was barbaric and cerebral... There was something vampiric about rock music... the way the electricity could stretch a single note forever; the way harmony could be layered upon harmony until you felt yourself dissolving in the sound. So eloquent of dread it was, the music.”
― Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

“Aggressive? Does she mean - tall? Because... I can't change that... No, the bottom drops out of my planet. The planet of me. The planet that has always tried to spin as closely to friendly planets and as far from aggro ones as possible. I've never been called aggressive out loud, but it's definitely something that's floated in the air... It's because the general cloud of my presence causes disruption that I want to orbit the chill planets, the ones with the spaceship landings, the ones little kids look up through their telescopes and think... wow... that looks like a friendly planet... I work unpaid overtime at not wanting people to think I mean them harm. So now the bottom falls out of everything I live on... She's surprised to see me vulnerable. It's not a possibility she's considered. That words based on assumptions might break me. That those simple words might unleash an ocean made up of the little sips of sadness that come from being repeatedly misinterpreted as a glance... All she sees is an aggressor. Someone she needs to protect herself from at all costs, protect an audience from... The others who might have to witness me.”
― Zawe Ashton, Character Breakdown