genius lasts longer than beauty

to define is to limit

[impossibilitas]

They still held each other in the night when he did come over but it was more out of habit and desolation and anticipated loneliness and disheartenment, as if they were trying to store up these moments together against what was coming.

Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night

[impossibilitas]

He is not going to tell me what he is really thinking or feeling, and he despises me because I do not know. He will never tell me anything about himself, or about the things which are most important to him.

—Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin

[impossibilitas]

His smile contracted, vanished.  Once again, the impassivitiy of mortal weariness fell like a shadow across his strangely youthful face.

—Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin

[impossibilitas]

I am in difficulty, and I want your advice.”“Then you could not have come to a better person, for I have read all the novels in London and know all the difficulties that anybody can possibly get into, and, what is more important, I know all the means of getting out of them, let them be what they may.

The String of Pearls or Sweeney Todd

[impossibilitas]

When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles me. Indeed, when I am in really great trouble, as anyone who knows me intimately will tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink. At the present moment I am eating muffins because I'm unhappy. Besides, I am particularly fond of muffins.

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

[impossibilitas]

How thoughtless of me. I should have remembered that when one is going to lead an entirely new life, one requires regular and wholesome meals.

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

[impossibilitas]

If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

[feebleseagull-deactivated202010]

‘It just doesn’t make sense,’ Elizabeth insisted. ‘Are we supposed to believe that civilization has just come to an end?’ ‘Well,’ Clark offered, ‘it was always a little fragile, wouldn’t you say?’

Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven (2014)

[impossibilitas]

The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me.

Jeanette Winterson - Sexing the Cherry

[impossibilitas]

You’re not being kind. I detest kindness, he says. I detest people who pride themselves on being kind. Snot-nosed nickel-and-dime do-gooders, doling out the kindness. They’re contemptible. I’m kind, she says, trying to smile. I’m kind to you, at any rate. If I thought that’s all it was - lukewarm milk-and-water kindness - I’d be gone. Midnight train, bat out of hell. I’d take my chances. I’m no charity case, I’m not looking for nooky handouts.

Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

[aseaofquotes]

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

[aseaofquotes]

Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

[aseaofquotes]

Jamie McGuire, Beautiful Oblivion

[mythofsisyphus-daily]

But one would have to know whether a friend of the desperate man had not that very day addressed him indifferently.

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

(via

mythofsisyphus-daily

)

[feebleseagull-deactivated202010]

Do you mean that you could have forgiven him if he’d left you for a woman, but not if he’s left you for an idea? You think you’re a match for the one, but against the other you’re helpless?

W. Somerset Maugham, ‘The Moon and Sixpence’ (via feebleseagull)

[impossibilitas]

Then darkness rolled up again, the darkness that is primeval but not eternal, and yields to its own painful dawn.

E. M. Forster, Maurice

[aseaofquotes]

Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice