Anna

“Suddenly he can spend an afternoon in Vienna looking at Vermeer’s The Art of Painting, and it’s hot outside, and if he wants he can buy himself a cheap cold glass of beer afterwards. It’s like something he assumed was just a painted backdrop all his life has revealed itself to be real: foreign cities are real, and famous artworks, and underground railway systems, and remnants of the Berlin Wall. That’s money, the substance that makes the world real. There’s something so corrupt and sexy about it.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“A flight of stairs leads up to the dwelling-rooms. I had never seen Paul Morphy, but I knew the moment he stood quietly before me, simply dressed, slight, smooth and melancholy-faced, with a head and brow overhanging with their own weight. So full of dignity, so empty of self-consciousness, was his presence, that I was almost prepared by it for the quick answer he made me that he was but an amateur,”
― David Lawson, Paul Morphy: The Pride and Sorrow of Chess

“I hold a beast, an angel and a madman in me.”
― Dylan Thomas

“I long for you; I who usually longs without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena