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"Kissing Big Swiss 's teeth was jarring and humiliating, like kissing a bathroom sink. But maybe that was too unkind. It was like kissing a baptismal font full of holy water."

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

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"Almost any time somebody gets me a present, it ends up making me sad."

Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

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I'm impressed, despite my still-racing heartbeat. How does he do it? How does this boy navigate my emotions like a seasoned sailor, finding the clear skies and bringing them closer, when all I seem able to do is hold fast to the storms?

- Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

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If on a Winter's Night, a Traveller by Italo Calvino

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"Narcissus loves what he is. Sappho bitterly worships in her companions what she has not been."

Fires by Marguerite Yourcenar

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some more lines from The Secret History that I enjoyed (from chapter 2)

*you'll probably notice I'm rereading atm and marking down what I love xx

"As I lay on my side, staring at a pool of white moonlight on the wooden floor, a gust of wind blew the curtains out, long and pale as ghosts. As though an invisible hand were leafing through them, the pages of the Parmenides rippled back and forth." Pages 69-70 - I loved this one in particular because of the imagery, more than anything it offers in a cerebral or personality-based way. I find that reading Donna Tartt's writing makes me feel like I'm sort of wading through a pool of butter -- I want to take my time to understand everything in this thick text (in terms of content moreso than length) so it's slow-going but smooth. Does that make sense? whatever.

"Though I had believed they were snubbing me, now I realize they were only waiting, politely as maiden aunts, for me to make the next move." Page 80 - This was more what I was referring to with personality/character above, I think this reveals something about Richard and his relationship with the other students but also felt comforting/relatable to me since I tend to be a bit solitary at times.

"It's beautiful here, but morning light can make the most vulgar things tolerable." Page 83 - This one actually reminded me of that line from The Outsiders about looking at sunsets. I also felt that in general this scene told the reader a lot about Henry, which I enjoyed.

"And always, always, that same toast. Live forever." Page 91 - This did feel poignant to me, especially in context of studying classics in a class where their modern stories are still things published thousands of years ago. I think living forever here refers less to actual mortality like in myth and moreso living forever through stories and writings.

"[...] the idea was so truly heavenly that I'm not sure I thought, even then, it could ever really happen, but I like to believe I did." Page 103 - this line, or the idea of wanting to believe that you thought or felt something in the past, feels almost nostalgic to me. I think I've knowingly chosen to believe something about what I've thought or felt as a child, which, despite being the same age as the characters, reminded me that they are still very young. As old and pretentious as they act these are still a bunch of 20 year olds...

"There was a ragged burst if laughter; faint, but clear, it floated back across the evening air. That laughter haunts me still." Page 103

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A child is a hostage. Life has you. The same holds true of a dog, a partner, or a cicada. Leda would say: "I am no longer free to kill myself since I bought a swan."

Marguerite Yourcenar's Fires

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lines from the secret history (chapter 1) i enjoyed

"Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw', that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?"

"I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way."

"There is to me about this place, a smell of rot that ripe fruit makes. Nowhere, ever, have the hideous mechanics of birth and copulation and death -- those monstrous upheavals of life that the Greeks call miasma, defilement -- been so brutal or been painted up to look so pretty; have so many people put so much faith in lies and mutability and death death death."

"I was so swarmed by the flock of possibilities that drifted up murmuring and smiling to crowd about me on the bright autumn sidewalk that -- like a farm boy flustered by a bevy of prostitutes -- I brushed right through them, to the pay phone on the corner, to call a cab to take me to school." (this one in particular reminds me a bit of the famous plath quote about the fig tree)

"Though I can digress with the best of them, I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive."

(for this one I'm only going to be including the dialogue bar one line) "Death is the mother of beauty," "And what is beauty?" "Terror." [...] "And if beauty is terror, then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?" "To live," "To live forever," The teakettle began to whistle.

(long ass quote so i cut a ton) "Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? [...] head thrown back, throat to the stars, 'more like deer than human being.' To be absolutely free! [...] But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! [...] If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. The spit us out reborn."