Stellar Words @stellarcollectswords - Tumblr Blog

Beautiful, and sharply accurate description of many Soviet spaces.

Flights, by Olga Tokarczuk

Olga Tokarczuk, Flights

If I lived by the sea I would never be really sad. I get an immense sense of eternity and peace from the ocean. I can lose myself in staring at it hour after hour.

Sylvia Plath, from a letter to Aurelia Plath written c. July 1951 (via mirroir)

medeae

Wilfred Owen, from “Dulce et Decorum Est"

If you blush, I’ll build breakwaters. When you’re tired, I’ll tidy your table. If you cry, I’ll climb crags. When you’re sick, I’ll sit at your side. If you frown, I’ll fence fields. When you’re ashamed, I’ll shine your shoes. If you laugh, I’ll liberate lands. When you’re depressed, I’ll play you the piano. If you sigh, I’ll sack cities. When you’re unlucky, I’ll launder your linen. If you sing, I’ll save souls. When you’re hurt, I’ll hold your hand. If you smile, I’ll smelt silver. When you’re afraid, I’ll fetch you food. If you talk, I’ll track down trolls. When you’re on edge, I’ll empty your ash-tray. If you whisper, I’ll wage wars. When you’re cross, I’ll clean your coat. If you whistle, I’ll water wastes. When you’re bored, I’ll bathe your brows.

From ‘Age of Anxiety’, by W.H. Auden.

#poetry #auden #age of anxiety #alliteration

‘I thought you meant to be a magician not an explorer!’

‘It is the same thing. An explorer cannot stay at home reading maps other men have made. A magician cannot increase the stock of magic by reading other men’s books.’

- Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell, a novel, by Susanna Clarke.

#quotes #magic

mashamorevna

Death was sweet; it smelled of wine and it stroked her hair.

Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die (via mirroir)

furnacecold

linden-street

I am not a woman, but the light that falls on this gate, on this ground. I am the seasons, I think sometimes, January, May, November; the mud, the mist, the dawn.

The Waves by Virginia Woolf (via mirroir)

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But this is human life: the war, the deeds, The disappointment, the anxiety, Imagination’s struggles, far and nigh, All human; bearing in themselves this good, That they are still the air, the subtle food, To make us feel existence, and to shew How quiet death is.

John Keats, Endymion (via mirroir)

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven, W. B.Yeats

#W. B. Yeats #poetry

We hear war called murder. It is not: it is suicide.

Ramsay MacDonald, 1930

#quotes #war

For we fight not for glory, nor riches, nor honours, but for freedom alone, which no good man gives up except with his life.

Declaration of Arbroath, 1320

#quotes #freedom #Declaration of Arbroath #Scotland #Scottish Indenepndance

When I suffer in mind, stories are my refuge; I take them like opium; and I consider one who writes them as a sort of doctor of the mind...

Robert Louis Stevenson in a letter to Iohn Meiklejohn, 1/2/1880

#Robert Louis Stevenson #quotes #literature #stories