“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”
―
―
“Listen, I have been educated.
I have learned about Western
Civilization. Do you know
What the message of Western
Civilization is? I am alone.”
―
I have learned about Western
Civilization. Do you know
What the message of Western
Civilization is? I am alone.”
―
“When I was nine years old, the world, too, was nine years old. At least, there was no difference between us, no opposition, no distance. We just tumbled around from sunrise to sunset, earth and body as alike as two pennies. And there was never a harsh word between us, for the simple reason that there were no words at all between us; we never uttered a word to each other, the world and I. Our relationship was beyond language—and thus also beyond time. We were one big space (which was, of course, a very small space).”
― The Condition of Secrecy
― The Condition of Secrecy
“Opera has the power to warn you that you have wasted your life. You haven't acted on your desires. You've suffered a stunted, vicarious existence. You've silenced your passions. The volume, height, depth, lushness, and excess of operatic utterance reveal, by contrast, how small your gestures have been until now, how impoverished your physicality; you have only used a fraction of your bodily endowment, and your throat is closed.”
― The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality and the Mystery of Desire
― The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality and the Mystery of Desire
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
―
―
⊹⊹⊹gw’s 2025 Year in Books
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