'You don't care now, do you? Not really care?
You must write your quota of pages tonight and the rest of us must shift as we can. 
Well, we'll shift. I'd respect you more - oh yes, and envy you less - if you did care.'

'I care,' said Henry.

'You don't know what it means,' said Oliver briskly, turning his hands meditatively before the flames.
He said, 'People like me have very complicated feelings about people like you.
I'm aware that you don't really care whether I tell you about them or not - 
you'd probably rather I didn't. 
But I seem to share what's apparently a common urge to explain everything to you - to drop all my little worries and stoppages into the well of your considered silence. 
Perhaps because one feels that since the worries don't worry you,
and the stoppages don't stop you, you've got time to make something of them, 
whilst one gets on with the struggling.
Which I resent; but still, I talk.'

The Shadow of the Sun ~ A.S.Byatt

He had a vision of himself in his study, a dedicated and misguided Casaubon, and saw the precession of lives that he told himself his touch had withered - Caroline whom he had allowed to think that teacups - for him - were enough; Marget, whom he had thought arrogantly to solve by re-arranging on paper; Anna, who had gone pale in his shadow, and poked blindly about in no direction, a plant in a cellar.

The Shadow of the Sun ~ A.S.Byatt

Part of the trouble was that he was so upset that he had quite forgotten what he had been writing, and could not have summoned life or concentration enough to plan another paragraph; he saw his work now as he occasionally saw a novel the moment he had finished it - a grotesque parody of life, a string of words, selecting and obscuring facts to suit himself. And dead, dead, dead.

The Shadow of the Sun ~ A.S.Byatt

Goodnight & Go

Say goodnight and go

Skipping beats
Blushing cheeks
I am struggling
Daydreaming
Bed scenes in
The corner cafe
And then I'm left in bits
Recovering tectonic
Tremblings
You get me every time

Why'd ya have to be so cute
It's impossible to ignore you
Must you make me laugh so much
It's bad enough we get along so well
Say goodnight and go

Follow you home
You've got your headphones on
And you're dancing
Got lucky
Beautiful shot
You're taking everything off
Watch the curtains wide open
And you're following the same routine
Flicking through the TV
Relaxed and reclining
And you think you're alone

Oh, why'd ya have to be so cute
It's impossible to ignore you
Must you make me laugh so much
It's bad enough we get along so well
Say goodnight and go

One of these days
You'll miss your train
And come stay with me
(It's always say goodnight and go)
We'll have drinks
And talk about things and
Any excuse to stay awake with you
You'd sleep here
I'd sleep there
But then the heating may be down again
At my convenience
We'd be good
We'd be great together

Go...

Why'd ya have to be so cute
It's impossible to ignore you
Must you make me laugh so much
It's bad enough we get along so well
Say goodnight and go

Why's it always always
Goodnight and go
Oh, darling not again
Goodnight and
Go...

~ Imogen Heap

"No, of course you don't. You can't. I out to have seen that at first. You can't even begin to listen. What do you want to do?"

"I don't know." She hesitated, and then went on, driven. "But I don't want nothing. I want something, I want it badly. But I don't know what it is."

Oliver and Anna, The Shadow of the Sun ~ A.S.Byatt

Her view of love was still through the small end of the telescope; to be beautiful, it must be hopeless; if it looked, as Michael had, as though it might have been anything else, she took care to complicate it until it was safely impossible and remote again.

The Shadow of the Sun ~ A.S.Byatt

If I went away and lived my own life, she thought, I might manage to be everything I am, or have to be - and then I might see and not only remember having seen.

The Shadow of the Sun ~ A.S.Byatt

It had been an essential part of her picture that Michael should have been carefree, self-assured, even slightly cruel; he was easiest to admire like that. She did not quite know what to do with his anxiety; it was encouraging, but it diminished him in some way.

The Shadow of the Sun ~ A.S.Byatt

"She's in love."

"Happily?"

"Naturally not."

Henry and Oliver about Anna, The Shadow of the Sun ~ A.S.Byatt

I Get a Kick Out of You

I get no kick from Champagne;
Mere alcohol
Doesn't thrill me at all,
So tell me why should it be true
That I get a kick out of you.

Some get a kick from cocaine;
I'm sure that if
I took even one sniff
That would bore me terrifically too.

Yet I get a kick out of you.

I get a kick every time I see you standing there before me -
I get a kick though it's patently clear that you obviously don't adore me.

I get no kick in a plane;
Flying too high
With some bird in the sky
Is my idea of nothing to do.

Yet I get a kick out of you.

~ Cole Porter

We measure time according to the movement of countless suns; and they measure time by little machines in their little pockets.
Now tell me, how could we ever meet at the same place and the same time?

Sand and Foam ~ Kahlil Gibran

A root is a flower that disdains fame.

Sand and Foam ~ Kahlil Gibran

She had been a formidable academic in her day, cleverer, people said, than her husband, her sharp tongue venomous in his defense. After her marriage she taught and published less, talent and personality diminished by the appalling subservience of love.

The Children of Men ~ P.D. James

Feel, he told himself, feel, feel, feel. Even if what you feel is pain, only let your self feel.

The Children of Men ~ P.D. James

I couldn't then say what for nearly forty years I have known to be true.
I don't want anyone to look to me, not for protection, not for happiness, not for love, not for anything.

The Children of Men ~ P.D. James

I didn't love her but I did steal for her. I learned early and at that kitchen table that there are ways of avoiding, without guilt, the commitments of love.

The Children of Men ~ P.D. James

Charm is often despised but I can never see why.
No one has it who isn't capable of genuinely liking others, at least at the actual moment of meeting and speaking.
Charm is always genuine; it may be superficial but it isn't false.

The Children of Men ~ P.D. James

If from infancy you treat children as gods they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.

The Children of Men ~ P.D. James

Pleasure need not be less keen because there will be centuries of springs to come, their blossom unseen by human eyes, the walls will crumble, the trees die and rot, the gardens revert to weeds and grass because all beauty will outlive the human intelligence, which records, enjoys and celebrates it.
I tell myself this, but do I believe it when pleasure comes so rarely and, when it does, is so indistinguishable from pain?

The Children of Men ~ P.D. James

Influence was no substitute for power.

The Children of Men ~ P.D. James

二人の涙雨

Futari no Namida Ame
Our Tears of Rain

In the brightly lit city, while watching the lovers walk,
Shoulders brushing together so that their footsteps match
Unwittingly, I hurriedly moved away from you
Without saying a word against me, you lowered your eyes.

I allowed myself to be so spoiled by your continuous warmth
That I didn't even realize your loneliness.

From the skies, it's a rain of tears, the sadness keeps on piling up
"I can't walk anymore than this," you say as if your heart can't take it anymore.

Pretending I was wiping away the rain, I looked at you sideways
Suddenly I felt as if you were turning away from me.
No matter when, you were always smilingly supporting me.
and I was the one who had always turned away.

Taking hold of your hand, even if I embrace you strongly
I certainly won't be able to reach your heart.

From the skies, it's a rain of tears, the regret keeps on piling up
Uncontrollably falling, as if to hide my weaknesses.

From the skies, it's a rain of tears, the sadness keeps on piling up
"I can't walk anymore than this," you whisper.
From the skies, it's a rain of tears, our hearts are the same
'We can no longer go back to the past,' as if saying goodbye softly.

~ Kanjani∞ [Zukkoke Daidassou]

If you refuse to save even one life, how can you talk about bringing salvation to all of humanity?

Takagi Fujimaru, Episode 6 ~ Bloody Monday

We need our snobberies; equality is a political theory not a practical policy.

The Children of Men ~ P.D. James

When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely, but too well;
Of one, not easily jealous, but being wrought
Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe

Othello, Act 5, Scene 2, Othello ~ William Shakespeare

OTHELLO: She's like a liar gone to burning hell,
'Twas I that killed her.
EMILIA: O the more angel she,
And you the blacker devil.
OTHELLO: She turned to folly; and she was a whore.
EMILIA: Thou dost belie her, and thou art a devil.
OTHELLO: She was false as water.
EMILIA: Thou art rash as fire, to say
That she was false. O she was heavenly true.

Act 5, Scene 2, Othello ~ William Shakespeare

They are not jealous for the cause,
But jealous for they're are jealous. It is a monster
Begot upon itself, born on itself.

Emilia, Act 3, Scene 4, Othello ~ William Shakespeare

I should be wise, for honesty's a fool,
and loses what it works for.

Iago, Act 3, Scene 3, Othello ~ William Shakespeare

I had been happy, if the general camp,
Pioners and all, had tasted her sweet body,
So I had nothing known.

Othello, Act 3, Scene 3, Othello ~ William Shakespeare

O beware my lord of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss
Who certain of his fate loves not his wronger,
But O, what damned minutes tells he o'ver
Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet fondly loves.

Iago, Act 3, Scene 3, Othello ~ William Shakespeare

Men should be what they seem;
Or those that be not, would they might seem none.

Iago, Act 3, Scene 3, Othello ~ William Shakespeare

The Mutes

Those groans men use
passing a woman on the street
or on the steps of the subway

to tell her she is a female
and their flesh knows it,

are they a sort of tune,
an ugly enough song, sung
by a bird with a slit tongue

but meant for music?

Or are they the muffled roaring
of deafmutes trapped in a building that is
slowly filling with smoke?

Perhaps both.

Such men most often
look as if groan were all they could do,
yet a woman, in spite of herself,

knows it's a tribute:
if she were lacking all grace
they'd pass her in silence:

so it's not only to say she's
a warm hole. It's a word

in grief-language, nothing to do with
primitive, not an ur-language;
language stricken, sickened, cast down

in decrepitude. She wants to
throw the tribute away, dis-
gusted, and can't,

it goes on buzzing in her ear,
it changes the pace of her walk,
the torn posters in echoing corridors

spell it out, it
quakes and gnashes as the train comes in.
Her pulse sullenly

had picked up speed,
but the cars slow down and
jar to a stop while her understanding

keeps on translating:
'Life after life after life goes by

without poetry,
without seemliness,
without love.'

~Denise Levertov