Chapitre1 (Vero)

“[Emma, a fanfiction writer] says she feels like she has more in common, now, with that twelve-year-old girl [that she was] than with the professor she has seemed to become. "It is just sheerly for fun," Emma says of fandom. "It is grace freely given. It is joy shared without consideration of compensation or payback." To her, it's the opposite of work; it's play. [...] Fandom is about reclaiming that play space for "productive selfishness," she says, and "the assignment of your time according to whatever the fuck you feel like, instead of what would be most efficient, or most advantageous to others. It's as important to me as eating healthy or getting exercise.”
― Tabitha Carvan, This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

“This afternoon I walked through the city, making for a café where I was to meet Raphael. It was about half-past two on a day that had never really got light. It began to snow. The low clouds made a grey ceiling for the city; the snow muffled the noise of the cars until it became almost rhythmical; a steady, shushing noise, like the sound of tides beating endlessly on marble walls. I closed my eyes. I felt calm. There was a park. I entered it and followed a path through an avenue of tall, ancient trees with wide, dusky, grassy spaces on either side of them. The pale snow sifted down through bare winter branches. The lights of the cars on the distant road sparkled through the trees: red, yellow, white. It was very quiet. Though it was not yet twilight the streetlights shed a faint light. People were walking up and down on the path. An old man passed me. He looked sad and tired. He had broken veins on his cheeks and a bristly white beard. As he screwed up his eyes against the falling snow, I realised I knew him. He is depicted on the northern wall of the forty-eighth western hall. He is shown as a king with a little model of a walled city in one hand while the other hand he raises in blessing. I wanted to seize hold of him and say to him: In another world you are a king, noble and good! I have seen it! But I hesitated a moment too long and he disappeared into the crowd. A woman passed me with two children. One of the children had a wooden recorder in his hands. I knew them too. They are depicted in the twenty-seventh southern hall: a statue of two children laughing, one of them holding a flute. I came out of the park. The city streets rose up around me. There was a hotel with a courtyard with metal tables and chairs for people to sit in more clement weather. Today they were snow-strewn and forlorn. A lattice of wire was strung across the courtyard. Paper lanterns were hanging from the wires, spheres of vivid orange that blew and trembled in the snow and the thin wind; the sea-grey clouds raced across the sky and the orange lanterns shivered against them. The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

“Pour déjouer les méchancetés du Destin, nous n'avons que l'amour [...]. Inconsolables, nous n'avons que nous-mêmes pour rebondir, nous avons l'encyclopédie de nos amours et le poème de nos dignités [...].”
― bouchard, serge

“She had a pretty good voice, but she always said it was because of the bathroom acoustics. That was wrong, because my stepdad sometimes sang in the shower, and the acoustics didn’t stop him from sounding like a dying coyote.”
― Janae Marks, From the Desk of Zoe Washington