Adam

“Beauty was not everything. Beauty had this penalty — it came too readily, came too completely. It stilled life — froze it.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“...she took her hand and raised her brush. For a moment it stayed trembling in a painful but exciting ecstacy in the air. Where to begin?--that was the question at what point to make the first mark? One line placed on the canvas committed her to innumerable risks, to frequent and irrevocable decisions. All that in idea seemed simple became in practice immediately complex; as the waves shape themselves symmetrically from the cliff top, but to the swimmer among them are divided by steep gulfs, and foaming crests. Still the risk must run; the mark made.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“Abstraction is important, abstraction is necessary, otherwise we can't perceive the shapes—an ellipse, a triangle—that structure experience, provide its lattice, but she can be cold, the way stars are cold, beautiful cold light that bends around the sun, changing the star's apparent location, a problem of measurement, prosody, the ancient dream of conspiring (the car beeped and the lights flashed twice as I unlocked it)—a dream, not a theory. But in reality, I just mumbled something about having to get home, I'm sure your sister will show up soon. When I got into the car, he slowly raised an arm; I couldn't tell if the gesture meant goodbye or wait. Now I think it meant goodbye and wait.”
― Ben Lerner, The Lights: Poems

“The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse