But when the heart grows too full, it overflows.

words and words and more words. sideblog, follows from @lady-of-winterfell

[malinaa]

John Steinbeck, East of Eden

[literaturereads]

"And Cain says, “When you split me and my brother in the womb, you did not divide us evenly. He got kindness, and I got longing. He got complacence, and I got ambition. I want to kill him sometimes. I think sometimes he wants to die.”

- Nathaniel Orion, "Hevel"

[litverve]

“I like Simone Weil’s idea that writing is actually the translation of a text we already carry within us. That notion makes a heavy task lighter. In fact, though, writing is the backbreaking work of hacking a footpath, as in a coal mine; in total darkness, beneath the earth. In poetry there are moments of illumination. A streak of light falls in the dark corridor, then the darkness slams shut overhead once more. In prose the darknesses are even thicker, the black clods even harder.”

— Anna Kamienska, from “In That Great River: A Notebook”

[medeae]

“There is a message from god inside my mouth. You can only read it with your tongue. The word is, the point is, yes.”

— Daphne Gottlieb, from “carpe noctem,” 15 Ways to Stay Alive (via backshelfpoet)

[thatkindofwoman]

“She wanted a storm to match her rage.”

— George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows  

[cithaerons]

Leila Chatti, Morcellation

[luciferifilia-deactivated202504]

They used to call the devil the father of lies. But for someone whose sin is meant to be pride, you'd think that lying would leave something of a sour taste. So my theory is that when the devil wants to get something out of you, he doesn't lie at all. He tells you the exact, literal truth. And he lets you find your own way to hell.

— Mike Carey, (via. luciferifilia).

[fluentisonus]

thinking about ariadne calling the minotaur her brother

[fluentisonus]

"In truth I snatched you from your tumbling in the middle of the whirlpool

of death, and decided it was better to lose a true brother

than fail you, treacherous man, in your moment of crisis.

For which I will be given as spoils for the birds and beasts to tear apart,

and, dead, will not be buried in scattered earth." (Catullus 64.149-53)

Really interesting here is that Ariadne calls the Minotaur germanus, which not only means brother, but specifically "full brother" or "true brother" and is sometimes even used to refer to twins, when technically the Minotaur is a) her half brother and b) considered a monster. Like this quality that killing the Minotaur was a mistake, and that in the end the 'monster' who was her brother meant more and she shared more with than Theseus, who for all appearances is a good and heroic man, but in his abandonment and deceit is monstrous; and how that for that she thinks she's doomed to die alone (familyless! no one to bury her!), stranded forever on Naxos.

[weltonboys]

mother night, kurt vonnegut

[luciferifilia-deactivated202504]

Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.

— John Green, via luciferifilia.

[mirefireflies]

“the ending is always the same”

war of the foxes - richard silken / waterloo - ABBA / euripides’ medea - the little theatre / anne carson / the three fates - luca cambiaso / the oresteia - aeschylus / road to hell II - hadestown / when i met you - mira lightner / andersen’s fairy tale anthology

[luciferifilia-deactivated202504]

Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

— Franz Kafka, via luciferifilia.

[twinwound]

mary shelley writing about a monster rejected and abandoned by its creator and dedicating it to her own father i need to smoke a blunt with her i need to give her head

[unbearable-lightness-of-ink]

thinking about how the world would be better if more people understood the differences between 'the author failed to tell the story they wanted to tell' and 'the author told the story they wanted to tell, but they told it badly' and 'the author told the story they wanted to, and they told it well, but it wasn't the story I wanted to read'

[petaltexturedskies]

She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense… of being out, out, far out to sea and alone.

Virginia Woolf, from “Mrs Dalloway”

[gatheringbones]

“About noon, an arrow entered Joan’s body, just above her left breast, at exactly the place she had prophesied to her confessor on her way from Chinon to Orléans. She fell back, in shock and in great pain. She wept, despite her foreknowledge of the nature of her wound. It is as though she were surprised, not that she had been struck by an arrow, but that it would hurt.”

— Mary Gordon, Joan of Arc (via wheredoesthehoneyflow)

[cursemewithyourkiss]

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë