* . ⧠THE SECRET HISTORY⧠. *
                        - STARTERS -
â Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. â â Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming. â â This is the only story I will ever be able to tell. â â But how, how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder? â â Are you happy here? â â But isnât it also pain that often makes us most aware of self? â â Our own selves make us most unhappy, and thatâs why weâre so anxious to lose them, donât you think? â â Some things are too terrible to grasp at once. â â It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially. â â Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not. â â Love doesnât conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool. â â There are such things as ghosts. People everywhere have always known that. â â I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive. â â I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way. â â How did they get there? When did this happen? â â Anything is grand if itâs done on a large enough scale. â â Any action, in the fullness of time, sinks to nothingness. â â I suppose the shock of recognition is one of the nastiest shocks of all. â â Not quite what one expected, but once it happened one realized it couldnât be any other way. â â It is easy to see things in retrospect. â â What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star? â â I no longer have the ability to travel as freely as I would like. â â After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great. â â How quickly he fell; how soon it was over. â â They understand not only evil, it seemed, but the extravagance of tricks with which evil presents itself as good. â â Someone â was it van Gogh? â said that orange is the color of insanity. â â I suppose there is a certain crucial interval in everyoneâs life when character is fixed forever. â â It is dangerous to ignore the existence of the irrational. â â Who is in control here? â â I think itâs good to change the place where one sleeps from time to time. I believe it gives one more interesting dreams. â â Itâs a terrible thing, what we did. â â I had never been warm in my life, ever. â â It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world. â â It does not do to be frightened of things about which you know nothing. â â You are like children. Afraid of the dark. â â Itâs beautiful here, but morning light can make the most vulgar things tolerable. â




















