Nick :) > Nick :)'s Quotes

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“Reassuring you too that the world is forever, though you are only a blink in its course”
― Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk

“Away above a harborful of caulkless houses / among the charley noble chimney-pots of a rooftop rigged with clotheslines / a woman pastes up sails upon the wind."
That was a woman, perpetually appearing from behind something, too busy being a part of the world to consider it from the outside. She was the soft pink inside of the world.
Back when I got it, I had just noticed the beauty of the poem's imagery. Looking at it now, it had an added weight. I wanted to be outside the world, like a poet, and I wanted to be inside the world, like a woman.”
― Emily Zhou, Girlfriends

“The Cold Leech eats cold nothingness and shits hot, vital being. It is a demiurge, a little god in a thumb-sized shape, a miniature sun-
With a hairbrush handle you scrape the Cold Leeches off your windowpane. They fall off the glass. Immediately cool creeps back in. You do not care that they are miracles. You need your sleep. You have work tomorrow.”
― Zedeck Siew, Creatures of Near Kingdoms

“but in his one hand he held a holly-bundle,
that is greatest in greenery where groves are leafless,
and an axe in the other, ugly and monstrous,
a ruthless weapon aright for one in rhyme to describe:
the head was as large and as long as an ellwand,
a branch of green steel and of beaten gold;
the bit, burnished bright and broad at the edge,
as well shaped for shearing as sharp razors;
the stern was a stout staff, by which sternly he gripped it,
all bound with iron about to the base of the handle,
and engraved in green in graceful patterns,
lapped round with a lanyard that was lashed to the head
and down the length of the haft was looped many times;
and tassels of price were tied there in plenty
to bosses of the bright green, braided most richly.”
― Christopher Tolkien, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo

“When I was six, I tried to sleep every night with my arms folded behind my back like wings. This didn't last, because it is hard to sleep every night with your arms folded behind your back like wings.”
― Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk

“Let's say it once and for all: in the future mankind was immersed in the most endearing error a present mind can conceive. The past awaits us with open arms: toward it, we throw ourselves with our hearts full of faith in God, the source of all reason and justice. The path of the people is a backward path that goes forward, in a time that comes from the future and will end in the past, because the time of our countrymen more than path is time, and more than time is path.”
― Ángel Bonomini, The Novices of Lerna

“Poetry is no less a mystery than anything else on earth. One or two felicitous lines can hardly stir our vanity, since they are but gifts of Chance or of the Spirit; only the mistakes belong to us. I hope the reader will discover something worthy of his memory in these pages. In this world of ours beauty is quite common.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, In Praise of Darkness

“The short verses composed by the colon bacillus were extremely banal and unsuitable for recitation, since—for obvious reasons—bacteria knew nothing about English phonetics. Hence, they could master the meter of verse, but not the rules of rhyming;”
― Stanisław Lem, Imaginary Magnitude