― note

• this is an archive of quotes collected ~2024 and before
• ✧ . 　⁺ 　 . ⊹ 　˚　˖

　꒰┊ literature

• agathon's speech on eros — plato, the symposium (c. 380)

　

• "Let us adduce a similar proof of the tenderness of Love; for he walks not upon the earth, nor yet upon the skulls of men, which are not so very soft, but in the hearts and souls of both gods and men, which are of all things the softest: in them he walks and dwells and makes his home." — plato, the symposium (c. 380)

　

• "What a blessing... for the mind to dwell a world away from pain." — sophocles, oedipus rex (c. 429)

　

• "Go then if you must, but remember, no matter how foolish your deeds, those who love you will love you still." — sophocles, antigone (c. 440)

　

• "To see a world in a grain of sand / And a heaven in a wild flower." — william blake, "auguries of innocence" (c. 1803)

　

• "It seemed, in the end, that all this world, with all its inhabitants, both the strong and the weak, with all their habitations, whether beggars' shelters or gilded palaces, at this hour of twilight resembled a fantastic, enchanted vision, a dream which in its turn would instantly vanish and waste away as vapor into the dark blue heaven. Suddenly a certain strange thought began to stir inside me. I started and my heart was as if flooded in that instant by a hot jet of blood which had suddenly boiled up from the influx of a mighty sensation which until now had been unknown to me. In that moment, as it were, I understood something which up to that time had only stirred in me, but had not as yet been fully comprehended. I saw clearly, as it were, into something new, a completely new world, unfamiliar to me and known only through some obscure hearsay, through a certain mysterious sign. I think that in those precise minutes, my real existence began..." — fyodor dostoyevsky, petersburg visions in verse and prose (1861)

　

• "I began to look about intently and suddenly I noticed some strange people. They were all strange, extraordinary figures, completely prosaic, not Don Carloses or Posas to be sure, rather down-to-earth titular councilors and yet at the same time, as it were, sort of fantastic titular councilors. Someone was grimacing in front of having hidden himself behind all this fantastic crowd, and he was fidgeting some thread, some springs through, and these little dolls moved, and he laughed and laughed away." — fyodor dostoyevsky, petersburg visions in verse and prose (1861)

　

• "But here, too, I'm lying! Lying, because I myself know, like two times two, that it is not at all the underground that is better, but something different, completely different, which I thirst for but cannot ever find!" — fyodor dostoyevsky, notes from underground (1864)

　

• "Man is no longer an artist; he has become a work of art." — friedrich nietzsche, the birth of tragedy (1871)

　

• "... I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum." — vincent van gogh, letter to his brother (1882)

　

• "Plants will grow ... from my decaying body – trees and flowers – and the sun will warm them and I will exist in them – and nothing will perish – and that is eternity." — edvard munch (1892)

　

• "And dreaming thro' the dew-fall / The cold white blossoms wept." — sara teasdale, "the faery forest" (1911)

　

• "Real isn't how you are made... It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real." — margery williams bianco, the velveteen rabbit (1922)

　

• "I never wish to be easily defined. I’d rather float over other people’s minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person." — franz kafka, diary entry (1914)

　

• on introverted intuition — carl gustav jung, psychological types (1921)

　

• "The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart." — antoine de saint-exupéry, the little prince (1943)

　

• "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world..." — antoine de saint-exupéry, the little prince (1943)

　

• "You alone will have the stars as no one else has them... In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night... You - only you - will have stars that can laugh." — antoine de saint-exupéry, the little prince (1943)

　

• "He was a good boy, an angel." — 太宰 治, no longer human (1948)

　

• "And I love light. Perhaps you'll think it strange that an invisible man should need light, desire light, love light. But maybe it is exactly because I am invisible. Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form." — ralph ellison, invisible man (1952)

　

• "But I also think she was crying because, through the music, she might have guessed there were other ways of feeling." — clarice lispector, the hour of the star (1977)

　

• "How does one handle it? The greatest danger, as I see it in myself, is the danger of withdrawal into private worlds. We have to keep the channels in ourselves open to pain. At the same time it is essential that true joys be experienced, that the sunrise not leave us unmoved, for civilization depends on the true joys, all those that have nothing to do with money or affluence—nature, the arts, human love." — may sarton, the house by the sea (1977)

　

• Cinema is a language. It can say ... big, abstract things... And you can express a feeling and a thought that can’t be conveyed any other way. Its a magical medium. For me, it’s so beautiful to think about these pictures and sounds flowing together in time and in sequence... Its not just words or music-it’s a whole range of elements coming together and making something that didn’t exist before. It’s telling stories. It’s devising a world, an experience, that people cannot have unless they see that film. When I catch an idea for a film, I fall in love with the way cinema can express it. I like a story that holds abstractions, and that’s what cinema can do." — david lynch, catching the big fish (2006)

　

• "Saint Anthony said, in his solitude, he sometimes encountered devils who looked like angels, and other times he found angels who looked like devils. When asked how he could tell the difference, the saint said that you can only tell which is which by the way you feel after the creature has left your company." — elizabeth gilbert, eat, pray, love (2006)

　　　　― undated

• "And I forget the world - in silence sweet / I'm sweetly lulled by my imagination / And poetry awakens deep inside." — alexander pushkin, "autumn"

　

• "Is this really the world? Shall I grieve? Shall I hope? I prefer to sing." — adonis

　

• "When I woke the morning light was just slipping in front of the stars, and I was covered with blossoms." — mary oliver, "white flowers"

　

• "On the other hand, the plane of happening is considerably enlarged; or, rather, the limits of accountable reality, the limits of man-in-nature, fall away. Dreams, waking visions, even ghosts, are as much a part of this world as are the buildings, bridges, and canals of Petersburg; the line dividing the outer from the inner, the solid from the fantasmagorical, wavers. This is a fluid world, full of coincidences, chance but fatal meetings, crucial words accidentally overheard, embodied in the communicating streets and squares, the adjoining rooms and apartments of the city. Petersburg is not a backdrop for the events Dostoevsky narrates, but a constant participant in them, and a mirror of Raskolnikov's soul. The enigma of the city and the enigma of the hero are one." — richard pevear

　

• "Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man." — 莊子

　꒰┊ songs

• lyrics to macabre, the blossoming beelzebub, and other songs — 京 (dir en grey, sukekiyo)

　

• "And while my dreams made music in the night / Carefully / I was going to live" — mitski, "last words of a shooting star" (2014)

　꒰┊ film

• "It was like seeing light on stage, or mist, or the essence of something." — my dinner with andre (1981)

　

• "All you need is love." — michael (1996)

　

• "Any man, woman, child could buy their ticket, walk right in... And in they'd come entering a palace, like in a dream, like in heaven. Maybe you had worries and problems out there, but once you came through those doors, they didn't matter anymore. And you know why? Chaplin, that's why. And Keaton and Lloyd. Garbo, Gable, and Lombard, and Jimmy Stewart and Jimmy Cagney. Fred and Ginger. They were gods. And they lived up there. That was Olympus. Would you remember if I told you how lucky we felt just to be here? To have the privilege of watching them. I mean, this television thing. Why would you want to stay at home and watch a little box? ... (H)ow can you call that entertainment, alone in your living room? Where's the other people? Where's the audience? Where's the magic? I'll tell you, in a place like this, the magic is all around you. The trick is to see it." — the majestic (2001)

　

• "Just remember - however hard things get, however much you feel like you're struggling, the world is full of beauty. And it's up to you to capture it... To look and to share it with as many people as you can. You are a prism through which that beam of life refracts." — the electrical life of louis wain (2021)

　

• "When it comes to drawing, there's only really one rule you ever need to teach. It's to look." — the electrical life of louis wain (2021)

　

• "When you paint ... you connect with other people. You give them a piece of yourself, but they are also connecting with you. And that electricity that you describe, that you felt in (her) presence ... I'd call that love... And that is still here." — the electrical life of louis wain (2021)

　꒰┊ other

• on laura palmer's theme — angelo badalamenti 🌸

　

• "A body designed in fragments—or perhaps only the idea of one: vanilla daydreams and milk-laden bones atop lavender legs and hazy feet." — osmofolia, "exquisite corpse"

　

• "There have been many times on stage where you kind of get lost in the moment and you don't know where you are, you don't know who you are. You're just living the music, you're within the music. And that is the most beautiful and honest form of the arts expression, that is a part of you and you are a part of it." — serj tankian, interview (2024)