bittermelodiesreads

[bittermelodiesreads]

"But moment after moment elapsed. I still lived."

-Edgar Allan Poe, A Descent into the Maelstrom

#edgar allan poe #a descent into the maelstrom #short stories #literature #quotes

[bittermelodiesreads]

"I may wallow in filth, but I’m nobody’s slave; I can come and go, and that’s all there is to it. I shake it all off, and become a different person."

-Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

[bittermelodiesreads]

"I’m sure, you know, that somebody wronged you, and you were more sinned against than sinning."

-Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

[bittermelodiesreads]

'That’ll be the end of your memory on the earth; other women have children to come to their graveside, and fathers and husbands – but there’ll be no tears or sighs or prayers for you, and nobody, nobody at all in the whole world will ever come to your grave: your name will vanish from the face of the earth – just as if you had never existed, never been born! All in the mud and marsh, you can knock as much as you like on the coffin lid at night, when the dead awaken: “Let me out, good people, to live in the world. When I was alive I saw nothing of life; my life ran away down the drain; I drank it away in a pub in the Haymarket; let me live on earth again, good people!”'

-Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

[bittermelodiesreads]

"And nobody, nobody at all, ought to know what goes on between man and wife, if they love each other. And whatever sort of quarrels they have –they mustn’t even call their own mothers in as judges, with one telling tales about the other. They are their own judges. Love is a sacred secret, and ought to be kept hidden from all other eyes, whatever happens. It is holier that way, and better."

-Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

[bittermelodiesreads]

“Sometimes,” Jem said, “our lives can change so fast that the change outpaces our minds and hearts. It’s those times, I think, when our lives have altered but we still long for the time before everything was altered— that is when we feel the greatest pain.”

-Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

#the infernal devices #clockwork angel #cassandra clare #shadowhunters

[bittermelodiesreads]

“Whatever you are physically ,” he said, “male or female, strong or weak, ill or healthy—all those things matter less than what your heart contains. If you have the soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. Whatever the color, the shape, the design of the shade that conceals it, the flame inside the lamp remains the same. You are that flame.”

-Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

#clockwork angel #the infernal devices #cassandra clare #shadowhunters

[bittermelodiesreads]

“I believe in good and evil,” said Jem. “And I believe the soul is eternal. But I don’t believe in the fiery pit, the pitchforks, or endless torment. I do not believe you can threaten people into goodness.”

Tessa looked at Will. “What about you? What do you believe?”

“Pulvis et umbra sumus,” said Will, not looking at her as he spoke. “I believe we are dust and shadows. What else is there?”

-Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

#shadowhunters #the infernal devices #clockwork angel #cassandra clare

[bittermelodiesreads]

“Pulvis et umbra sumus. It’s a line from Horace. ‘We are dust and shadows.’ Appropriate, don’t you think ?” Will said. “It’s not a long life, killing demons; one tends to die young, and then they burn your body— dust to dust, in the literal sense. And then we vanish into the shadows of history, nary a mark on the page of a mundane book to remind the world that once we existed at all.”

-Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

[bittermelodiesreads]

-Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

[bittermelodiesreads]

-Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

-Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

#fyodor dostoyevsky #osamu dazai #notes from the underground #no longer human #the respectable man

[bittermelodiesreads]

-Remnants of Filth (Yu Wu) by Meatbun Doesn’t Eat Meat

#yuwu #gu mang #mo xi #remnants of filth #meatbun doesn't eat meat #danmei

[bittermelodiesreads]

-No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai

#no longer human #osamu dazai

[bittermelodiesreads]

'Lately, he had been wondering if codependence was such a bad thing. He took pleasure in his friendships, and it didn’t hurt anyone, so who cared if it was codependent or not? And anyway, how was a friendship any more codependent than a relationship? Why was it admirable when you were twenty-seven but creepy when you were thirty-seven? Why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn’t it even better? It was two people who remained together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified. Friendship was witnessing another’s slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honored by the privilege of getting to be present for another person’s most dismal moments, and knowing that you could be dismal around him in return.'

-A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (Part 3, Chapter 1)

#cr: a little life by hanya yanagihara #dark academia

[bittermelodiesreads]

And so he had begun his adulthood, the last three years spent bobbing from bank to bank in a muck-bottomed pond, the trees above and around him blotting out the light, making it too dark for him to see whether the lake he was in opened up into a river or whether it was contained, its own small universe in which he might spend years, decades—his life—searching bumblingly for a way out that didn’t exist, had never existed.

-A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (Chapter 2)

#cr: a little life by hanya yanagihara #dark academia

[bittermelodiesreads]

#plato #homosexuality #ancient greek

[bittermelodiesreads]

-The Secret History by Donna Tartt

#the secret history #donna tartt #francis abernathy #dark academia