elysian quotes

ˑ she/her ˑ 18 ˑ lover of words ˑ fanatic of dark academia & dark chocolate ˑ hopeless romantic ˑ pluviophile & bibliophile ˑ

[bibliophilequotes]

Wanna make a monster? Take the parts of yourself that make you uncomfortable — your weaknesses, bad thoughts, vanities, and hungers — and pretend they’re across the room. It’s too ugly to be human. It’s too ugly to be you. Children are afraid of the dark because they have nothing real to work with. Adults are afraid of themselves.

RICHARD SIKEN || “Black Telephone” from Spork Press Issue 1.3 (2002)

[bibliophilequotes]

We all have multiple existences — not entirely separate from one another, but wholly different in many respects. We exist not only as a human being, a conscience inside of a miraculously functioning body, but we exist outside of our own skin, too. We exist in the heart of everyone we’ve ever loved or been loved by, in the soul of everyone we’ve ever met, in the mind of everyone who’s ever heard the least bit about us, and in the consequence of generations to come. We exist, simultaneously, as a hero in one’s mind, and a villain in another’s. It would be exhaustingly trivial for you to set it upon yourself to please each and every person, to be a hero to everybody, to perfect all of your existences.

— me, around 3am one night, frantically typing the most random thoughts in my notes app, don’t judge me too much pls

[bibliophilequotes]

I am homesick for a place I am not sure even exists. One where my heart is full. My body loved. And my soul understood.

UNKOWN

[bibliophilequotes]

“What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind?”

VICTORIA “V.E.” SCHWAB || The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020)

[bibliophilequotes]

And in the end, we were all just humans, drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.

CHRISTOPHER POINDEXTER

[bibliophilequotes]

“It takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.”

OSCAR WILDE || An Ideal Husband (1895)

[bibliophilequotes]

Aren’t we all unfinished? Don’t we all need editing? Aren’t we all waiting to be read by someone praying that will tell us that we make sense? She don’t always make sense. But her imperfections are the things I love about her the most.

RUDY FRANCISCO || “A Lot Like You” (2012)

[bibliophilequotes]

“Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.”

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE || Beyond Good and Evil (1886)

[bibliophilequotes]

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

THOMAS MERTON || No Man is an Island (1955)

[bibliophilequotes]

“Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.”

SIGMUND FREUD

[bibliophilequotes]

I’m telling you that it hurt and you don’t get to deny that. When a person tells you that you hurt them, you don’t get to decide that you didn’t.

LOUIS SZÉKELY || Louie (2010) — S5E3, “Cop Story”

[bibliophilequotes]

“How many times have people used a pen or a paintbrush because they couldn’t pull the trigger?”

VIRGINIA WOOLF || Selected Essays (2009)

[bibliophilequotes]

Do not try to be pretty. You weren’t meant to be pretty; you were meant to burn down the earth and graffiti the sky. Don’t let anyone ever simplify you to just ‘pretty.’

SUZANNE RIVARD || Things I Wish My Mother Had Taught Me (2014)

[bibliophilequotes]

“If you must die, sweetheart, die knowing your life was my life’s best part.”

KEATON HENSON || “You” (2013)

[bibliophilequotes]

Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful. It was just red.

KAIT ROKOWSKI || Alight (2013)

[bibliophilequotes]

“You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it.”

ALAN MOORE || V for Vendetta (1982-1989)

[bibliophilequotes]

So you ask why we read books, watch movies, and create art? You know, people like to feel something. It reminds them they are still alive.

KATE WHITEMAN