Books Say

Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense out of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense out of are other people's lives, never your own. --Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot avatar credit: cremoisies@livejournal

[thelovejournals]

But his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered.

Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried (via thelovejournals)

[books-n-quotes]

How does this happen? To fall in love and be disassembled.

Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient (via books-n-quotes)

[bookssay]

“I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead.

Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

[booksquoteslove]

That was part of being a girl—you were resigned to whatever feedback you’d get. If you got mad, you were crazy, and if you didn’t react, you were a bitch. The only thing you could do was smile from the corner they’d backed you into. Implicate yourself in the joke even if the joke was always on you.

Emma Cline, The Girls (via booksquoteslove)

[booksqouted]

The problem with wanting,“ he whispered, his mouth trailing along my jaw until it hovered over my lips, "is that it makes us weak.

Leigh Bardugo, Shadow and Bone (via booksqouted)

[browndresswithwhitedots]

She gave only what was easy for her; what came naturally and instinctively. What she had always given of herself to past lovers, but nothing more.That was usually enough for them, at least in the short run, because she was very special in her way. As a result, she never made any genuine effort to go beyond her old safe boundaries, the first layer, below the thin topsoil of her limitations. She probably believed she worked hard to make their relationship succeed. Look at what I’m doing for you and all that I’m giving of myself. But it was no different from what she had given others in the past. Had she really made any new effort, gesture or concession? No. It is not hard for a person who knows how to waltz to waltz again. But if they have never tap danced and are asked to learn, then dancing becomes both difficult and challenging. She never attempted to dig deep within to find any latent qualities that might have helped her to grow and become more whole. It takes real courage and effort to mine undiscovered parts of ourselves and then use them. Because in truth we do not want things to change. We rarely choose to do it voluntarily. Because change invariably makes waves in our lives and the higher they are, the more they scare us. To attempt to become better (stronger, wiser, more understanding…) than we were yesterday means swimming straight into those waves. If she had looked and found such things, such potential, and then had the guts to put them to use, it might have changed everything.

Jonathan Carroll  (via modernhepburn)

[aseaofquotes]

Lauren Groff, Arcadia

[wwnorton-deactivated20200424]

Everything about her seems to be saying, Listen, if you don’t look attentively, if you don’t go beyond my simplicity to detect the simmering volcano in me, you are not it.

Rawi Hage, Carnival (via incogneko)

[larmoyante]

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are things you get ashamed of, because words make them smaller. When they were in your head they were limitless; but when they come out they seem to be no bigger than normal things. But that’s not all. The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried; they are clues that could guide your enemies to a prize they would love to steal. It’s hard and painful for you to talk about these things … and then people just look at you strangely. They haven’t understood what you’ve said at all, or why you almost cried while you were saying it.

Stephen King, The Body  (via sarahtotsy)

[seabois]

Her heart sank into her shoes as she realized at last how much she wanted him. No matter what his past was, no matter what he had done. Which was not to say that she would ever let him know, but only that he moved her chemically more than anyone she had ever met, that all other men seemed pale beside him.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, A New Leaf  (via thatkindofwoman)

[simply-quotes-deactivated202002]

Your memory is a monster; you forget—it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you—and summons them to your recall with will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you.

John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany (via simply-quotes)

[aseaofquotes]

Natsuo Kirino, Real World

[honeysighs]

I am trying to expose a secret told to nobody yet; I am asking you (as I stand with my back to you) to take my life in your hands and tell me whether I am doomed always to cause repulsion in those I love?

Virginia Woolf, The Waves (via honeysighs)

[1k84]

“Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering.”

Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (via wakingslumber)

[larmoyante]

You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.

Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless (via larmoyante)

[creatingaquietmind-deactivated2]

There’s always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it’s with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it’s one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again.

Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt (via creatingaquietmind)

[pavorst-deactivated20181204]

When I am lonely for boys it’s their bodies I miss. I study their hands lifting the cigarettes in the darkness of the movie theaters, the slope of a shoulder, the angle of a hip. Looking at them sideways, I examine them in different lights. My love for them is visual: that is the part of them I would like to possess. Don’t move, I think. Stay like that, let me have that.

Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye (via pavorst)