justanotherwritingaccount:

• “We think we have many desires, but in fact, we have only one. What is it?” …  “To live,” said Camilla. “To live forever.” 
  
• I liked the idea of living in a city — any city, especially a strange one — liked the thought of traffic and crowds, of working in a bookstore, waiting tables in a coffee shop, who knew what kind of solitary life I might slip into? Meals alone, walking the dogs in the evenings; and nobody knowing who I was.
• Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not.
• “In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.” 
  
• “It is easy to see things in retrospect. But I was ignorant then of everything but my own happiness, and I don’t know what else to say except that life itself seemed very magical in those days: a web of symbol, coincidence, premonition, omen. Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come together–my future, my past, the whole of my life–and I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say oh! oh! oh!”
  
• “I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.”
• That’s why he’s attracted to the Classics, and particularly to the Greeks — all those high, cold ideas of beauty and perfection.
  
• Does such a thing as “the fatal flaw”, that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.
  
• “Why does that obstinate little voice in our heads torment us so? Could it be because it reminds us that we are alive, of our mortality, of our individual souls- which, after all, we are too afraid to surrender but yet make us feel more miserable than any other thing? But isn’t it also pain that often makes us most aware of self? It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one’s burned tongues and skinned knees, that one’s aches and pains are all one’s own. Even more terrible, as we grow old, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that’s why we’re so anxious to lose them, don’t you think?”
• “After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great.” 
• But though I can digress with the best of them, I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive.
• “Are you happy here?“ I said at last. He considered this for a moment. “Not particularly,” he said. “But you’re not very happy where you are, either.”
• “Any action, in the fullness of time, sinks to nothingness.” 
• In this swarm of cigarettes and dark sophistication, they appeared here and there like figures from an allegory; or long-dead celebrants from some forgotten garden party.
  
• What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star?
• “But how,” said Charles, who was close to tears, “how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder?” Henry lit a cigarette. “I prefer to think of it,” he had said, “as redistribution of matter.”
• A light that made me think of long hours in dusty libraries, and old books, and silence.
  
• “Years ago, in an old notebook, I wrote: “One of Julian’s most attractive qualities is his inability to see anyone, or anything, in its true light.” And under it, in a different ink, “maybe one of my most attractive qualities, as well(?)“ 
  
• That was a cozy night, a happy night; lamps lit, sparkle of glasses, rain falling heavy on the roof. Outside, the treetops tumbled and tossed, with a foamy whoosh like club soda bubbling up in the glass. The windows were open and a damp cool breeze swirled through the curtains, bewitchingly wild and sweet.
  
• Maybe that’s why I tend to equate physical beauty with qualities with which it has absolutely nothing to do. I see a pretty mouth or a moody pair of eyes and imagine all sorts of deep affinities, private kinships.

This is actually one of my favorite fucking books ever. The aesthetic … the characters … the writing … the themes. I’ll be recommending it until someone finally kills me.