• “i am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art.” - vladimir nobokov, lolita
• “it’s a very greek idea, and a very profound one. beauty is terror. whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. and what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? to throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? euripides speaks of the maenads: head thrown i back, throat to the stars, ‘more like deer than human being.’ to be absolutely free! one is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. but how glorious to release them in a single burst! to sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! these are powerful mysteries. the bellowing of bulls. springs of honey bubbling from the ground. if we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let god consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. then spit us out reborn.” - donna tartt, the secret history
• "you love life because life’s all there is. there is no god and that’s his only commandment." - glen duncan, the last werewolf
• “in spite of all the refinements of civilization that conspired to make art - the dizzying perfection of the string quartet or the sprawling grandeur of fragonard’s canvases - beauty was savage. it was as dangerous and lawless as the earth had been eons before man had one single coherent thought in his head or wrote codes of conduct on tablets of clay. beauty was a savage garden.” - anne rice, the vampire lestat
• “awake, arise or be for ever fall’n.” - john milton, paradise lost
• “if it could just be a hell beyond that: the clean flame the two of us more than dead. then you will have only me then only me then the two of us amid the pointing and the horror beyond the clean flame. only you and me amid the pointing and the horror walled by the clean flame.” - william faulkner, the sound and the fury
• SONNET 19

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws, And make the earth devour her own sweet brood; Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws, And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood; Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st, And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time, To the wide world and all her fading sweets; But I forbid thee one most heinous crime: O, carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow, Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen; Him in thy course untainted do allow For beauty's pattern to succeeding men. Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong, My love shall in my verse ever live young.