Esther

“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Jude had smiled at him. "Oh, dying," he said dismissively. "We're all dying. He just knew his death would come sooner than he had planned. But that doesn't mean they weren't happy years, that it wasn't a happy life.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“bulls strut in pinwheel glory,
rockets stun the sky,
but I don't know
quite what to make
of the dead flowers
of myself,
whether to dump them
out of the bowl
or
press them between
these blank pages
and go on;
well, all grief comes down
to hard death
and weeping finally ends.
thank the god
who made
it.”
― Charles Bukowski, Betting on the Muse: Poems & Stories

“and I laugh, I can still laugh, who can't laugh when the
whole thing
is so ridiculous
that only the insane, the clowns, the halfwits,
the cheaters, the whores, the horseplayers, the bankrobbers,
the
poets... are interesting?”
― Charles Bukowski