“I have already spoken of my fondness for odors, the strong odors of the earth, of latrines, of the loins of Arabs and, above all, the odor of my farts, which is not the odor of my shit, a loathsome odor, so much so that here again I bury myself beneath the covers and gather in my cupped hands my crushed farts, which I carry to my nose. They open to me hidden treasures of happiness. I inhale, I suck in. I feel them, almost solid, going down through my nostrils. But only the odor of my own farts delights me, and those of the handsomest boy repel me. Even the faintest doubt as to whether an odor comes from me or someone else is enough for me to stop relishing it.”
― Our Lady of the Flowers
― Our Lady of the Flowers
“You're not my sweetheart, you're myself. My heart or my sex. A branch of me.”
― Our Lady of the Flowers
― Our Lady of the Flowers
“It’s so easy to give up – to live in dreams with yourself instead of in stories with a friend. I distrust dreams. It’s just your brain re-stirring information uselessly, fending for itself in another dimension, making movies of its own fears and you wake up horrified or calmed by something that never happened or dissatisfied and you go back down for more which is all you get. Dreaming is like getting drunk alone, the less you live the more you dream, the more fantastic and outrageous the dreams get. I bet that’s all dead people do, dream endlessly, and dreams are death in training.”
― Chelsea Girls
― Chelsea Girls
“Martin walking in dim, green places--she could picture his life away in the forests, a man's life, good with the goodness of danger, a primitive, strong, imperative thing--a man's life, the life that should have been hers--And her eyes filled with heavy, regretful tears, yet she did not quite know for what she was weeping. She only knew that some great sense of loss, some great sense of incompleteness possessed her, and she let the tears trickle down her face, wiping them off one by one with her finger.”
― The Well of Ioneliness
― The Well of Ioneliness
“Quite solemnly I told myself: "even though I'm still undecided at present and appear to be an idle pleasure-seeker par excellence, this is no reason to doubt that perhaps soon a time will come when I'll be firm resolution itself and ready to take on the full harshness, the utter nakedness, of life just as bravely as the next fellow."
I was not a little proud of this monologue.”
― Masquerade and Other Stories
I was not a little proud of this monologue.”
― Masquerade and Other Stories
Henry’s 2025 Year in Books
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