“This,” James said, when he had disappeared. “This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeit of our own behavior—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars … as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforc’d obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting-on!”
― If We Were Villains
― If We Were Villains
“Imagine having all your own thoughts and feelings tangled up with all the thoughts and feelings of a whole other person. It can be hard, sometimes, to sort out which is which.”
― If We Were Villains
― If We Were Villains
“But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart—by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.”
― If We Were Villains
― If We Were Villains
“I don't know, it's like I look at you and suddenly the sonnets makes sense. The good ones, anyway.”
― If We Were Villains
― If We Were Villains
“I never asked where he went, worried he wouldn’t ask me to follow.”
― If We Were Villains
― If We Were Villains
Noah’s 2025 Year in Books
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