Vanessa
https://www.goodreads.com/vanessagsreads
“Eroticism is mystique; that is, the aura of emotion and imagination around sex. It cannot be 'fixed' by codes of social or moral convenience, whether from the political left or right. For nature's fascism is greater than that of any society. There is a daemonic instability in sexual relations that we may have to accept.”
― Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson
― Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson
“When it over, I want to say:all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular,and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
from "When the death comes”
― New and Selected Poems, Volume One
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular,and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
from "When the death comes”
― New and Selected Poems, Volume One
“Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.”
― Death in Venice and Other Tales
― Death in Venice and Other Tales
“The western mind makes definitions; it draws lines.”
― Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson
― Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson
“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.”
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Vanessa’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Vanessa’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Favorite Genres
Art, Classics, Crime, Fiction, Historical fiction, Horror, Mystery, Non-fiction, Poetry, Science fiction, Suspense, and Thriller
Polls voted on by Vanessa
Lists liked by Vanessa
















