Definitions

"Gift of love, to one who wishes love."

-OF OF WW

When you're in my head

Now is all we have. May you all make the most of it.

— Josh Homme

Seldomly

"Well-behaved women seldom make history."

- Thatcher Ulrich

Quaint

"I admire all that quaint, old-fashioned politeness; it is much more to my taste than modern ease; modern ease often disgusts me."

- Jane Austen, Emma

G-L-O-R-I-A

"It's only once that you accept that life is a tragedy that you can start to live".

- Gloria Vanderbilt

Poppycock

"You're only given a little spark of madness. If you lose that... You're nothing."

- Robin Williams

Neil nailing it

"This is everything I have to tell you about love: nothing.
This is everything I've learned about marriage: nothing.

Only that the world out there is complicated,
and there are beasts in the night, and delight and pain,
and the only thing that makes it okay, sometimes,
is to reach out a hand in the darkness and find another hand to squeeze,
and not to be alone.

It's not the kisses, or never just the kisses: it's what they mean.
Somebody's got your back.
Somebody knows your worst self and somehow doesn't want to rescue you
or send for the army to rescue them.

It's not two broken halves becoming one.
It's the light from a distant lighthouse bringing you both safely home
because home is wherever you are both together.
So this is everything I have to tell you about love and marriage: nothing,
like a book without pages or a forest without trees.
Because there are things you cannot know before you experience them.
Because no study can prepare you for the joys or the trials.
Because nobody else's love, nobody else's marriage, is like yours,
and it's a road you can only learn by walking it,
a dance you cannot be taught,
a song that did not exist before you began, together, to sing.

And because in the darkness you will reach out a hand,
not knowing for certain if someone else is even there.
And your hands will meet,
and then neither of you will ever need to be alone again.


And that's all I know about love."

- Neil Gaiman

Cherry Garcia

31

(...) A mostly empty wine bottle stands on the table. The bar is deserted. Sachs can’t remember when he was last this drunk, or this tense and relaxed at the same time: relaxed, because an intelligent young woman is enjoying his company; tense, because he is ready to lance the boil on his conscience. To Sachs’s wry surprise, he is attracted to Luisa Rey, and he sorely regrets they met in these circumstances. The woman and the reporter keep blurring into one another.

“Let’s change the subject,” Sachs says. “Your car, your”–he does a Hollywood SS officer accent–“ ‘Volkswagen .’ What’s its name?”

“How do you know my Beetle has a name?”

“All Beetle owners give their cars names. But please don’t tell me it’s John, George, Paul, or Ringo.”  God, Luisa Rey, you’re beautiful.

She says, “You’ll laugh.”

“I won’t.”

“You will.”

“I, Isaac Caspar Sachs, solemnly vow not to laugh.”

“You’d better not with a middle name like Caspar. It’s Garcia.”

They both shake, noiselessly, until they burst into laughter. Maybe she likes me too, maybe she’s not just doing her job.

- Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell, 2004)

Project HYDRA

28

Isaac Sachs sits hunched in the bay window of the Swannekke Hotel Bar and watches yatchs in the creamy evening blues. A beer stands untouched on the tab. (...)

Luisa wanders over to the bay window. An untouched beer sits on the table, but there's no sign of its owner, so she sits down on the warmed seat. It's the best seat in the house. She watches yatchs in the creamy evening blues.

- Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell, 2004)

21

“Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.

Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo... Lee... Ta."

- Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

Attribution Theory

"When I is replaced with we, even illness becomes wellness".

- (Attributed to) Malcolm X

Life, part II

"Variety is life; uniformity is death".

- (Attributed to) Pyotr Kropotkin

La Môme

(Journaliste) - Si vous aviez un conseil à donner à une femme, quel serait-il?
(Edith Piaf) - Aimer.
- À un enfant?
- Aimer.
- À une adolescente?
- Aimer.

Living dead girl

"L'amour est le meilleur des remèdes a toutes les injustices".

Oldie, but goldie

"If Hell is other people, thought Shadow, then Purgatory is airports".

- Shadow Moon, "American Gods" (Neil Gaiman, 2001)

Into the Unknown

"My favorite thing is to go where I've never been."

— Diane Arbus

Dementors

"They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them. Even Muggles feel their presence, though they can’t see them. 

Get too near one of them and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you.

If it can, it will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself — soul-less and evil. You’ll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life."

- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J. K. Rowling

Iwan Rheum

"Love, I have heard say, looks through spectacles that make copper seem gold, poverty wealth, and blear eyes pearls".

"El amor (según yo he oído decir) mira con unos antojos que hacen parecer oro al cobre, a la pobreza riqueza, y a las legañas perlas".

- Don Quijote de la Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes

Sapo-Rana

"Hubiera dado la vida por ayudarte, pero resulta que son otras las salvadoras.

(...) Ahora haré lo que me dé la gana y a la hora que quiera...

Lo único que te pido es que no me engañes en nada, ya no hay razón, escríbeme cada vez que puedas, procura no trabajar demasiado ahora que comiences el fresco, cuídate muchísimo tus ojitos, no vivas solito para que haya alguien que te cuide, y hagas lo que hagas, pase lo que pase,
siempre te adorará

tu Frida".

- F. Kahlo

I'm better

"When you got the personality, you don't need the nudity."

- Mae West