Ari

“I am a phantom built out of pain. Whenever I find it hard to know what to do with myself, I imagine I have a zip fastener in my belly, from my neck to my groin, and that I'm slowly undoing it, from top to bottom. And then I pull my arms out of my arms, my legs out of my legs, and take my head off in my head. As I extract myself from my own body, it falls off me like old clothes. Underneath them, I am finer, soft, almost transparent. I have a body like a Jellyfish, white, milky, phosphorescent. This fantasy is the only thing capable of bringing me relief. Oh yes, then I am free.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

“There have been five great kisses since 1642 B.C, when Saul and Delilah Korn's inadvertent discovery swept across Western civilization. (Before that couples hooked thumbs). And the precise rating of kisses is a terribly difficult thing, often leading to great controversy, because although everyone agrees with the formula of affection times purity times intensity times duration, no one has ever been completely satisfied with how much weight each element should receive. But on any system, there are five that everyone agrees deserve full marks. Well, this one left them all behind.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“Jenie waited a bloom time, and a green time and an orange time. But when the pollen again gilded the sun and sifted down on the world she began to stand around the gate and expect things. What things. She didn't know exactly. She knew things that nobody had ever told her. For instance, the words of the trees and the wind. She often spoke to falling seeds and said, 'Ah hope you fall on soft ground,' because she had heard the seeds saying that to each other as they passed. She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the grey dust of its making. The familiar people and things had failed her so she hung over the gate and looked up the road towards way off. She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“He stooped to the evil of hypocrisy with others, sceptical of their innocence which he could cajole so easily.”
― James Joyce, A Portait of the Artist as a Young Man