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“...I was lost with the rest. I had traded the fight against love for the fight against loneliness, the fight against life for the fight against death.”
― The Beautiful and Damned
― The Beautiful and Damned
“Gloria had lulled Anthony's mind to sleep. She, who seemed of all women the wisest and the finest, hung like a brilliant curtain across his doorways, shutting out the light of the sun. In those first few years what he believed bore invariably the stamp of Gloria; he saw the sun always through the pattern of the curtain.”
― The Beautiful and Damned
― The Beautiful and Damned
“In a moment he would call Tana and they would pour into themselves a gay and delicate poison which would restore them momentarily to the pleasurable excitement of childhood, when every face in a crowd had carried its suggestion of splendid and significant transactions taking place somewhere to some magnificent and illimitable purpose...Life was no more than this summer afternoon; a faint wind stirring the lace collar of Gloria's dress, the slow baking drowsiness of the veranda...Intolerably unmoved they all seemed, removed from any romantic imminency of action. Even Gloria's beauty needed wild emotions, needed poignancy, needed death...”
― The Beautiful and Damned
― The Beautiful and Damned
“There was a kindliness about intoxication - there was that indescribable gloss and glamour it gave, like the memories of ephemeral and faded evenings. After a few high-balls there was magic in the tall glowing Arabian night of the Bush Terminal Building - its summit a peak of sheer grandeur, gold and dreaming against the inaccessible sky. And Wall Street, the crass, the banal - again it was a triumph of gold, a gorgeous sentient spectacle; it was where the great kings kept the moment for their wars...
...The fruit of youth, or the grape, the transitory magic of the brief passage from darkness to darkness - the old illusion that truth and beauty were in some way entwined.”
― The Beautiful and Damned
...The fruit of youth, or the grape, the transitory magic of the brief passage from darkness to darkness - the old illusion that truth and beauty were in some way entwined.”
― The Beautiful and Damned
“The - pan-ic - " he began but got no further, for Gloria's hand swung around swiftly and caught him in the cheek. At this he all at once let go of her, and she fell to the floor, her shoulder hitting the table a glancing blow in transit...
Then the room seemed full of men and smoke. There was Tana in his white coat reeling about supported by Maury. Into his flute he was blowing a weird blend of sound that was known, cried Anthony, as the Japanese train song. Joe Hull had found a box of candles and was juggling them, yelling "One down!" every time he missed, and Dick was dancing by himself in a fascinated whirl around and about the room. It appeared to her that everything in the room was staggering in a grotesque fourth-dimensional gyrations through intersecting planes of hazy blue.
Outside the storm had come up amazingly - the lulls within were filled with the scrape of the tall bushes against the house and the roaring of the rain on the tin roof of the kitchen.”
― The Beautiful and Damned
Then the room seemed full of men and smoke. There was Tana in his white coat reeling about supported by Maury. Into his flute he was blowing a weird blend of sound that was known, cried Anthony, as the Japanese train song. Joe Hull had found a box of candles and was juggling them, yelling "One down!" every time he missed, and Dick was dancing by himself in a fascinated whirl around and about the room. It appeared to her that everything in the room was staggering in a grotesque fourth-dimensional gyrations through intersecting planes of hazy blue.
Outside the storm had come up amazingly - the lulls within were filled with the scrape of the tall bushes against the house and the roaring of the rain on the tin roof of the kitchen.”
― The Beautiful and Damned
Constant Reader
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A forum for friendly discussion of classics, literary fiction, nonfiction, poetry and short stories. We also love movies and art. Don't ask to join th ...more
THE Group for Authors!
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— last activity Nov 19, 2025 09:55AM
This is a group for authors to discuss their craft, as well as publishing and book marketing.
Ruby Grace’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Ruby Grace’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
3,610 books
|
196 friends
217 books
|
8 friends
1,363 books
|
3,311 friends
178 books
|
4 friends
46,491 books
|
49 friends
689 books
|
7 friends
1,439 books
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137 friends
2,884 books
|
1,847 friends
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