“Raskolnikov took the little journal and glanced briefly at his article. Contradictory as it was to his situation and condition, he still felt that strange and mordantly sweet sensation an author experiences on seeing himself in print for the first time.” Dostoevsky. (via chris-ziegler)

(via blagdaddy)

“Another circumstance, too, worried me in those days: that there was no one like me and I was unlike anyone else. “I am alone and they are everyone,” I thought—and pondered.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

(via s0nnets)

(Source: quid-pro-quote, via insteadofspeaking)

“But the young men whom she met were ordinary and she gave them no encouragement, trying to console her romantic desires by eating a great deal of Turkish Delight in secret.” Dubliners, James Joyce (via filthiestlaugh)

(via killiandonnellyswristcuffs)

“Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance… Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.” James Joyce, Araby (via saferthanastrangeland)

(Source: twisttheoaks)

“He had often said to me: ‘I am not long for this world,’ and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis.” Dubliners by James Joyce (via un-soir)

“Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” James Joyce, “Araby” (via digressionsofateenagebibliophile)

“The soul…has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the body. When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.” James Joyce (The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)

(Source: lynseygraham)

“But they never learned what it was that Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs Which had to do, for there was a gust of wind, and they were gone.” last line of A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle (via alistoflastlines)