Violet wells

“Human lives...are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence... into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual's life”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Venice is a Dorian Gray city. Somewhere up there in the world's attic, there's another place with the haggard, poxed and ravaged face of unspeakable evil. And I suspect it's Cardiff.”
― A.A. Gill, Table Talk

“His true goal was not to free the prisoners; it was to show that people without fear still exist. That, too, was playacting. But he had no other possibility. His choice was not between playacting and action. His choice was between playacting and no action at all. There are situations in which people are condemned to playact. Their struggle with mute power (the mute power across the river, a police transmogrified into mute microphones in the wall) is the struggle of a theater company that has attacked an army.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Do we ever give anyone the gift they actually want?”
― Michael Cunningham, By Nightfall