Blake Christian

“Personally I have to exercise a lot of agency in reading, and understanding what I read, and bearing it all in mind for long enough to make sense of the book as I go along. In no sense does it feel like a passive process by which beauty is transmitted to me without my involvement; it feels like an active effort, which an experience of beauty is the constructed result. But, I think more importantly, great novels engage my sympathies and make me desire things.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“You never do get to go back to anything, but it really takes a long time to learn that….”
― Diane di Prima, Memoirs of a Beatnik

“Is the word ‘passionate’, or is it not, basically an obscene item of vocabulary? No, it isn’t. But is it like a small bandage placed over an item of vocabulary that is in fact obscene? Maybe, yes. A word with blood running through it, a red word. In casual conversation it’s better to use words that are grey or beige.”
― Sally Rooney, Intermezzo

“Two people who want the same thing will never generate the same intensity as two people who want different things, or one person who wants into an absence, a void--...”
― Katie Kitamura, Audition