Virtuous Libertines

  "Destruction, like creation, is one of nature's mandates." - Marquis de Sade  

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"And the earth is so heavy, bearing down on you with the weight of a thousand mountains of lead. You envy men buried at sea, for when the tide tosses their bodies in the water, and when the waves swing their bodies in the sea, the movement must give them the illusion of a little more life." - Supervert, Necrophilia Variations Art by Axel Sauerwald

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"Tell me then, does love make one a fool or do only fools fall in love?" - Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red

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"You lie there with the ground pressing down on you, suffocating you, seeping into your very pores. A worm or a mole comes by and you’re grateful for the company until you realize that it has only come to eat you. You feel it nibbling your finger or gnawing a little hole in your side or boring through the bone of your skull. You imagine you feel the lips of the mole against your temple, the ridges of the earthworm sliding through your ear. You see your own brain become a slithering mass of maggots and grubs. Memories, things you cherish, the last thoughts that give you warmth or happiness—these you envision sliding down the throats of the creepiest vermin. Your love for your family becomes worm meal. Your knowledge of classical music perishes in peristalsis. You return to the earth through the intermediary of beasts. It’s not pleasant. “Dust to dust” is a lie. The truth is a movement from flesh to food to feces—and only then to dust." - Supervert, Necrophilia Variations

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"How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known?" - Orhan Pamuk, Snow

Collage by Sara Shakeel

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"I lay there feeling horribly vulnerable, exposed to the universe, as though I had to protect my guts against rain or bird droppings. If I weren’t careful, squirrels might build nests in my chest cavity or rats might chew up my heart." - Supervert, Necrophilia Variations

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"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned," - Spoken by Perez in Act 3, Scene 2, The Mourning Bride, William Congreve(1697)

Art by Don Blanding

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"When you love a city and have explored it frequently on foot, your body, not to mention your soul, gets to know the streets so well after a number of years that in a fit of melancholy, perhaps stirred by a light snow falling ever so sorrowfully, you'll discover your legs carrying you of their own accord toward one of your favourite promontories." - Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red Photography by Satori Nagata

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“ I loved my wounds, not because they hurt but because they were like a gun in my pocket. They gave me a power that no one knew I had. Maybe, I thought, I should just exercise that power now. Maybe I should give up on this idea of a last hurrah. Why bother? If I was going to die, then did it really matter how I spent my final hour? Cavorting in the arms of a prostitute or walking down Fifth Avenue drinking a lemonade—what did it matter?" - Supervert, Necrophilia Variations Art by Miles Johnston

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“He in his madness prays for storms, and dreams that storms will bring him peace.” — Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych Man of Sorrows(1480) by Robin Isely

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“Your body scraped against mine, like a matchstick begging for a fire.” - Unknown

Painting by Ron Hicks

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"Sometimes I dance, alone, to music no-one can hear but me. When I dance I feel the beat of the earth’s own heart rise through my feet and legs, through my loins and belly and into my chest, until my own heart beats in time with the earth’s. Then I wonder if you feel it too, beneath that portion of the earth’s crust where you stand, or walk, or lie, or dance too. Because always, when I’m dancing, I’m dancing with you." - Sarah Bower, The Book of Love

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“...and there you have it, another body on the floor surrounded by things that don't mean much to anyone except to the one who can't take any of them along. ” ― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

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“I’ll tell you another secret, this one for your own good. You may think the past has something to tell you. You may think that you should listen, should strain to make out its whispers, should bend over backward, stoop down low to hear its voice breathed up from the ground, from the dead places. You may think there’s something in it for you, something to understand or make sense of.

But I know the truth: I know from the nights of Coldness. I know the past will drag you backward and down, have you snatching at whispers of wind and the gibberish of trees rubbing together, trying to decipher some code, trying to piece together what was broken. It’s hopeless. The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside of you like a stone. Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging at your back and running its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do—the only thing— is run.” -Lauren Oliver, Delirium

Art by Hieu Nguyen / Kelogsloops

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“Now and then there are readings that make the hairs on the neck, the non-existent pelt, stand on end and tremble, when every word burns and shines hard and clear and infinite and exact, like stones of fire, like points of stars in the dark—readings when the knowledge that we shall know the writing differently or better or satisfactorily, runs ahead of any capacity to say what we know, or how. In these readings, a sense that the text has appeared to be wholly new, never before seen, is followed, almost immediately, by the sense that it was always there, that we the readers, knew it was always there, and have always known it was as it was, though we have now for the first time recognised, become fully cognisant of, our knowledge." - A.S. Byatt, Possession

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"Just because things happen slow doesn't mean you'll be ready for them. If they happened fast, you'd be alert for all kinds of suddenness, aware that speed was trump. "Slow" works in an altogether different principle, on the deceptive impression that there's plenty of time to prepare, which conceals the central fact, that no matter how slow things go, you'll always be slower." - Richard Russo, Empire Falls

Art by Konstantin Razumov

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“Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock 'n' roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights.” ― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

Painting by Luis Ricardo Falero

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"If it weren't for greed, intolerance, hate, passion and murder, you would have no works of art, no great buildings, no medical science, no Mozart, no Van Gough, no Muppets and no Louis Armstrong." - Jasper Fforde, The Big Over Easy

Madonna in Glory by Carlo Dolci, detail