Quote by Faulkner

“An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don’t (sic) know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done….The writer’s only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is worth any number of old ladies.”

—William Faulkner

Paul Bergon  Autochrome, circa 1910

Quote by Alice Bolin

“When a cop kills an unarmed man, it is because he senses his power being threatened by fear that he believes he should never have to feel. When a man kills his ex-girlfriend because she leaves him, he is saying the same thing: shame and sadness are feelings I should not have. Honor killings, as it turns out, are as American as apple pie.” 
― Alice Bolin, Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving American Culture

The Naming of Cats by T.S. Eliot

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey —
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter —
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkstrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum —
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover —
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

Turning to love

“Writing is really just a matter of writing a lot, writing consistently and having faith that you'll continue to get better and better. Sometimes, people think that if they don't display great talent and have some success right away, they won't succeed. But writing is about struggling through and learning and finding out what it is about writing itself that you really love.” 

― Laura Kasischke

from Writing Notebook

Boy: You're using me.

Girl: What?

Boy (looks at the clock): I get an hour or two, then you go.

Girl: What's wrong with that?

Boy: Where do you go when you leave here?

Girl: Nowhere. I drive. I just drive.

Book Quotes I Love

“Our memories are like a city: we tear some structures down, and we use rubble of the old to raise up new ones. Some memories are bright glass, blindingly beautiful when they catch the sun, but then there are the darker days, when they reflect only the crumbling walls of their derelict neighbours. Some memories are buried under years of patient construction; their echoing halls may never again be seen or walked down, but still they are the foundations for everything that stands above them.” 
                                            from The City's Son by Tom Pollack

Emily Bronte quote

'I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.' – Emily Brontë

Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.  Crowned

With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.

Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.

A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,

A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—

They are gone.  They are gone to feed the roses.  Elegant and curled

Is the blossom.  Fragrant is the blossom.  I know.  But I do not approve.

More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.

I know.  But I do not approve.  And I am not resigned.

Happy 200th Birthday, Emily Bronte

https://melindajaneharrisonworld.tumblr.com/post/176453979756/tolrone-wuthering-heights

Today is Emily Bronte's 200th birthday. Happy Birthday and thank you Emily, for Wuthering Heights.

How I feel, too

https://melindajaneharrisonworld.tumblr.com/post/176312555336/i-was-fascinated-by-strangers-wanted-to-know-what

Afternoon on a Hill

I will be the gladdest thing 
 Under the sun! 
 I will touch a hundred flowers 
 And not pick one. 

 I will look at cliffs and clouds 
 With quiet eyes, 
 Watch the wind bow down the grass, 
 And the grass rise. 

 And when lights begin to show 
 Up from the town, 
I will mark which must be mine, 
 And then start down!

                 Edna St. Vincent Millay

Quote

“In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and the revelry above may cause us to forget their existence...” 

― Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Widow

“We are not idealized wild things.
We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.” 
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

I have become a "widow" and am in mourning, for all that I was and all that I will never be. I have lost my husband in a sea of memories, tears, and tomorrows yet to come. I reach out for my own hand and cannot find it. Something shadowed has replaced me,  a stranger struggling with illness and confusion, and minutes and hours and days alone, a kind of loneliness that has no solid definition.--Jane

by Rossetti

Some days I am yellow and warm-hearted, living in tune to place and people, eyes opened, soul stirring, skin pricked, attached to nothing and everything.  

Madly Jane

Moving On

"[O]ne of the chief errors of thought is to continue to think in one set of forms, categories, ideas, etc., when the object, the content, has moved on, has created or laid premises for an extension, a development of thought."

CLR James, Notes on Dialectics.

Quote for Sleeping Beauty Retelling

And I've never loved a darker blue Than the darkness I've known in you; Owned from you. You whose heart would sing of anarchy. You who’d laugh at meanings, guarantees, so beautifully When our truth is burned from history By those who’ve figured justice in fond memory. Witness me Like fire weeping from a Cedar tree. Knowing that my love would burn with me We'll live eternally

Lyrics from Better Love by Hozier



( I don't often post quotes that reveal too much about my work, but when I saw this, it reminded me of a scene between the heroine and the hero of my book. It's something "She" would say to "Him" near the end of the story.)

Quotes

http://melindajaneharrisonworld.tumblr.com/post/148879839296/i-have-a-need-of-silence-and-of-stars-too-much

Moonlight and lanterns

http://melindajaneharrisonworld.tumblr.com/post/151812069256/detailsofpaintings-john-singer-sargent

Wuthering Heights: Fantasy and Realism