“It is essential to practice reading as an art.”— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals
Margaret Atwood, from Power Politics
“He knew that Ron and Hermione were more shocked than they were letting on, but the mere fact that they were still there on either side of him, speaking bracing words of comfort, not shrinking from him as though he were contaminated or dangerous, was worth more than he could ever tell them”
I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head.
Paula Hawkins (The Girl on the Train)
I made a rule for myself: I would not include anything that human beings had not already done in some other place or time, or for which the technology did not already exist. I did not wish to be accused of dark, twisted inventions, or of misrepresenting the human potential for deplorable behaviour. The group-activated hangings, the tearing apart of human beings, the clothing specific to castes and classes, the forced childbearing and the appropriation of the results, the children stolen by regimes and placed for upbringing with high-ranking officials, the forbidding of literacy, the denial of property rights: all had precedents, and many were to be found not in other cultures and religions, but within western society.
Margaret Atwood on The Handmaid’s Tale in a 2012 interview (via this-is-sar)
*brings books to social events*
You not only employ my mind all day; but you intrude upon my sleep. I meet you in every dream-and when I wake I cannot close my eyes again for ruminating on your sweetnesses.
Alexander Hamilton to Elizabeth Schuyler, October 5, 1780, two months before their wedding
(via this-mundane-world)