James Hughes

“From someone who doesn't want to share your destiny, you should neither accept a cigarette”
― Cesare Pavese, This Business of Living: Diaries, 1935-1950

“Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi. (Death will come and it will have your eyes.)”
― Cesare Pavese

“Remember Rio de Janeiro, the size of God’s hand, sardines fleshed-open at the market, the way I entered you and moved inside? Looking down, is this the kind of density you can live with? What is the slightness of our bodies to stay, to be good at loving a second time? My mouth pretends it is an oar when it lives inside your mouth, but you are far away.”
― Stacie Cassarino, Zero at the Bone

“I am reminded, now, of Leonardo's advice to painters: You should fix your eyes, he says, on certain walls stained with damp. You will see in these the likenesses of divine landscapes, adorned with mountains, ruins, rocks, extensive plains; and you will see there battles and strange figures engaged in violent actions. For in such walls the same thing happens as in the sound of church bells, in whose reverberations you may find every word imaginable.”
― Ciaran Carson