“Books can be possessive, can’t they? You’re walking around in a bookstore and a certain one will jump out at you, like it had moved there on its own, just to get your attention. Sometimes what’s inside will change your life, but sometimes you don’t even have to read it. Sometimes it’s a comfort just to have a book around. Many of these books haven’t even had their spines cracked. ‘Why do you buy books you don’t even read?’ our daughter asks us. That’s like asking someone who lives alone why they bought a cat. For company, of course.”
The Château de Chambord at Loir-et-Cher, France is one of the most renown châteaux because of its distinct French Renaissance architecture which infuses French medieval forms with classical Renaissance structures. The châteaux, however, was never completed and constructed by King François I.
“My mind was slowly erasing him from my memory, but then my foolish heart would go in and clumsily re-draw the parts that were missing, naively adding color to the areas I should have just let fade. I was re-creating him as I wished to remember, because here’s the thing about memory, it’s all made up.”
“One thing I am certain of, I do not want to be betrayed, but that’s quite hard to say, casually, at the beginning of a relationship. It’s not a word people use very often, which confuses me, because there are different kinds of infidelity, but betrayal is betrayal wherever you find it. By betrayal, I mean promising to be on your side, and then being on somebody else’s.”
— Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (via creatingaquietmind)
You don’t know me Never will, never will I’m outside your picture frame And the glass is breaking now You can’t see me Never will, never will If you’re never gonna see
What if I’m a crowded desert Too much pain with little pleasure What if I’m the nicest place you never want to go What if I don’t know who I am Will that keep us both from trying To find out and when you have Be sure to let me know
“You come and see me among flowers and pictures, and think me mysterious, romantic, and all the rest of it. Being yourself very inexperience and very emotional, you go home and invent a story about me, and now you can’t separate me from the person you’ve imagined me to be. You call that, I suppose, being in love; as a matter of fact it’s being in delusion. All romantic people are the same,” she added. “My mother spends her life in making stories about the people she’s fond of. But I won’t have you do it about me, if I can help it.”
“You can’t help it,” he said.
“I ward you it’s the source of all evil.”
“And of all good,” he added.”
“The dawn is smiling on the dew that covers
The tearful roses; lo, the little lovers
That kiss the buds, and all the flutterings
In jasmine bloom, and privet, of white wings,
That go and come, and fly, and peep and hide,
With muffled music, murmured far and wide.
Ah, the Spring time, when we think of all the lays
That dreamy lovers send to dreamy mays,
Of the fond hearts within a billet bound,
Of all the soft silk paper that pens wound,
The messages of love that mortals write
Filled with intoxication of delight,
Written in April and before the May time
Shredded and flown, playthings for the wind’s playtime,
We dream that all white butterflies above,
Who seek through clouds or waters souls to love,
And leave their lady mistress in despair,
To flit to flowers, as kinder and more fair,
Are but torn love-letters, that through the skies
Flutter, and float, and change to butterflies.”
—
The Genesis of Butterflies by Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
[This English translation of “The Genesis of Butterflies” was composed by Andrew Lang (1844-1912).]
“I wanted to be a writer, that’s all. I wanted to write about it all. Everything that happens in a moment. The way the flowers looked when you carried them in your arms. This towel, how it smells, how it feels, this thread. All our feelings, yours and mine. The history of it, who we once were. Everything in the world. Everything all mixed up, like it’s all mixed up now. And I failed. I failed. No matter what you start with it ends up being so much less. Sheer fucking pride and stupidity. “
