1
" I recall certain moments, let us call them icebergs in paradise, when after having had my fill of her –after fabulous, insane exertions that left me limp and azure-barred–I would gather her in my arms with, at last, a mute moan of human tenderness (her skin glistening in the neon light coming from the paved court through the slits in the blind, her soot-black lashes matted, her grave gray eyes more vacant than ever–for all the world a little patient still in the confusion of a drug after a major operation)–and the tenderness would deepen to shame and despair, and I would lull and rock my lone light Lolita in my marble arms, and moan in her warm hair, and caress her at random and mutely ask her blessing, and at the peak of this human agonized selfless tenderness (with my soul actually hanging around her naked body and ready to repent), all at once, ironically, horribly, lust would swell again–and 'oh, no,' Lolita would say with a sigh to heaven, and the next moment the tenderness and the azure–all would be shattered. "
― Vladimir Nabokov , Lolita
5
" Before every elementary school classroom had a 'Drop Everything and Read' period, before parents and educators agonized more about children being glued to Call of Duty or getting sucked into the vortex of the Internet, reading as a childhood activity was not always revered. Maybe it was in some families, in some towns, in some magical places that seemed to exist only in stories, but not where I was. Nobody trotted out the kid who read all the time as someone to be admired like the ones who did tennis and ballet and other feats requiring basic coordination.
While those other kids pursued their after-school activities in earnest, I failed at art, gymnastics, ice skating, soccer, and ballet with a lethal mix of inability, fear and boredom. Coerced into any group endeavor, I wished I could just be home already. Rainy days were a godsend because you could curl up on a sofa without being banished into the outdoors with an ominous 'Go play outside.'
Well into adulthood, I would chastise myself over not settling on a hobby—knitting or yoga or swing dancing or crosswords—and just reading instead. The default position. Everyone else had a passion; where was mine? How much happier I would have been to know that reading was itself a passion. Nobody treated it that way, and it didn't occur to me to think otherwise. "
― Pamela Paul , My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues
6
" But now, inside the gallery, something happens to him. He finds his emotions gripped by the paintings, the huge, colorful canvases by Diego Rivera, the tiny, agonized self-portraits by Frida Kahlo, the woman Rivera loved. Fabien barely notices the crowds that cluster in front of the pictures.
He stops before a perfect little painting in which she has pictured her spine as a cracked column. There is something about the grief in her eyes that won't let him look away. That is suffering, he thinks. He thinks about how long he's been moping about Sandrine, and it makes him feel embarrassed, self-indulgent. Theirs, he suspects, was not an epic love story like Diego and Frida's.
He finds himself coming back again and again to stand in front of the same pictures, reading about the couple's life, the passion they shared for their art, for workers' rights, for each other. He feels an appetite growing within him for something bigger, better, more meaningful. He wants to live like these people. He has to make his writing better, to keep going. He has to.
He is filled with an urge to go home and write something that is fresh and new and has in it the honesty of these pictures. Most of all he just wants to write. But what? "
― Jojo Moyes , Paris for One
9
" I sat at my desk, poured myself a glass of wine, and pondered life...my profession...was it meaningless? I took a long, drawn-back swig of the bourbon and slammed down the glass. I only then noticed the stream of filtered light illuminating through the window, through the partially drawn shades. It was beautiful. I thought to myself, " I am a critic. My life is criticizing the works of others, the joys of others, the very essence of what others have toiled, agonized and gone mad over. " I am a critic. I write in a magazine about how I don't like what someone else likes, merely because they wrote it." Write what you love, they always say. " I am a hater," I said, pondering the beautiful sunlight and my glass of alcohol, " ...but I hate for the enjoyment of others. "
11
" Then her brain caught up with her body and a trickle of uncertainty slid through her. She stilled, heart pounding, body aching with the most intense desire she’d ever known. Nathan stopped and raised his head to look down at her, his hand still cupping her breast. He was breathing as hard as she was, his eyes glittering with a hunger so raw it sliced her inside. When she didn’t say anything he started to remove his hand but she tightened her grip and held him there as she gazed into his eyes. “I can’t be just another notch on your belt, Nathan,” she whispered in an agonized voice. Not with him, it would crush her. If that’s all she was to him, she would rather stop things here than continue. She’d already battled long and hard to overcome feeling cheap and used. She wouldn’t do it again for any man, not even Nathan. The anguished look on his face made her feel terrible for saying it, but she’d had to make it clear.
“No,” he insisted, leaning down to rest his forehead against hers and closing his eyes. She could feel the urgency in him, the way it strung his muscles tight, the fingers in her hair sliding open to cradle the back of her skull. The protective, possessive gesture made her melt and lean into his hold. “No, you’re not, I swear to God you’re not. "
― Kaylea Cross , Avenged (Hostage Rescue Team #5)
14
" I would rather go mad, gone down the dark road to Mexico, heroin dripping in my veins,
eyes and ears full of marijuana,
eating the god Peyote on the floor of a mudhut on the border
or laying in a hotel room over the body of some suffering man or woman;
rather jar my body down the road, crying by a diner in the Western sun;
rather crawl on my naked belly over the tincans of Cincinnati;
rather drag a rotten railroad tie to a Golgotha in the Rockies;
rather, crowned with thorns in Galveston, nailed hand and foot in Los Angeles, raised up to die in Denver,
pierced in the side in Chicago, perished and tombed in New Orleans and resurrected in 1958 somewhere on Garret Mountain,
come down roaring in a blaze of hot cars and garbage,
streetcorner Evangel in front of City I-Tall, surrounded by statues of agonized lions,
with a mouthful of shit, and the hair rising on my scalp,
screaming and dancing in praise of Eternity annihilating the sidewalk, annihilating reality,
screaming and dancing against the orchestra in the destructible ballroom of the world,
blood streaming from my belly and shoulders
flooding the city with its hideous ecstasy, rolling over the pavements and highways
by the bayoux and forests and derricks leaving my flesh and my bones hanging on the trees. "
― Allen Ginsberg
