a story worth reading

manga|novel|prose|poetry|fanfiction snippets of poetry, novels, articles, manga, etc that matter to me. a list of stories worth reading heavily inspired by mangacaps

[winterofherdiscontent]

“Carcass-gardener, honey-maker, the darkness pulls on your skin like tarp. Heart-render, life-taker, my maelstrom in sacrificial devotion, the bog in your veins is an outcry of phantoms. I watch corvids gather upon your shoulders, you lead them to the chapel, to a fissure in the night, where our brutality festers a red sea, a hindrance, like opium invading the system, like a star in a chokehold. We stand within what’s left of the sacrament. Unabashed; we have unraveled the maple leaves, waged a war of unforgiving light across the ribs of dead-end roads.”

— GRAVE-ROBBING || j.r (via jupiterreed)

[astoryworthreading]

Here is my secret. It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

[sorrowsfall-deactivated20190102]

The trouble is that people who aren’t taught grammar very well in school fall for these statements from these pundits, delivered with vast authority from above. I’m fighting that. A very interesting case in point is using “they” as a singular. This offends the grammar bullies endlessly, it is wrong, wrong, wrong! Well it was right until the 18th century, when they invented the rule that He includes She. It didn’t exist in English before then. Shakespeare used “they” instead of “he” or “she"—we all do, we always have done, in speaking, in colloquial English. It took the women’s movement to bring it back to English literature. And it is important. Becuase it’s a crossroads between correctness bullying and the moral use of language. If “he” includes “she” but “she” doesn’t include "he,“ a big statement is being made, with huge social and moral implications. But we don’t have to use "he” that way—we’ve got “they.” Why not use it?

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Writer’s Chronicle, March/April 2017, A Conversation on Craft with Ursula K. Le Guin by David Naimon (via sorrowsfall)

[quoted-books]

The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (via quoted-books)

[astoryworthreading]

And you must always clean up your own messes, even when your messes look like you and curtsy very violently when what they mean is, I am going to make trouble forever and ever.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente

[astoryworthreading]

It was a strange feeling, like suddenly becoming aware of gravity in a social way, sitting down to tea with it and learning its family history.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente

[astoryworthreading]

The sky glowed blue and rose, and a little yellow star came on like a light bulb in the warm evening. That’s Venus, September thought. She was the goddess of love. It’s nice that love comes on first thing in the evening, and goes out last in the morning. Love keeps the light on all night.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente

[astoryworthreading]

But autumn dealt its days like a pack of golden cards, and no one came.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente

[astoryworthreading]

On Sundays, she didn’t hurt. She didn’t miss a place she could never explain to a grown-up person.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente

[astoryworthreading]

Most folk have three faces–the face they get when they’re children, the face they own when they’re grown, and the face they’ve earned when they’re old.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente

[astoryworthreading]

Sometimes she burned to do it. But something older and wiser within her said: some things are for hiding and for keeping.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente

[astoryworthreading]

The difference between a ceiling and a sky was only where you stood.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente

[astoryworthreading]

Most houses worth their windows have basements, and the world does too. Dark spaces under the busy rooms, lit with lightbulbs hanging by the ceiling from lonely cords at the bottom of creaky suitcases.The world keeps a great number of things down there.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente

[astoryworthreading]

I shall not be afraid of anything I haven’t even seen yet.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente

[astoryworthreading]

What was a person, if not the things they knew and the face they wore?

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente

[astoryworthreading]

Hearts set about finding other hearts the moment they are born, and between them, they weave nets so frightfully strong and tight that you end up bound forever in hopeless knots, even to the shadow of a beast you knew and loved long ago.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente

[astoryworthreading]

The smell of loving is a difficult thing to describe, but if you think of the times when someone has held you close and made you safe, you will remember how it smells just as well as I do.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente