jean valjean

Jean Valjean wept for a long time, and sobbed with more weakness than a woman, more terror than a child. While he wept, the light grew brighter in his brain, an extraordinary light, at once ravishing and terrible.

...

He looked at his life, and it appeared to him horrible; at his soul, and it appeared to him frightful. Still a soft light was shed over both, and he fancied that he saw Satan by the light of paradise.

-Victor Hugo

Les Misérables

blind dogs

He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. the crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.

....

No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you.

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On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.

....

In that cold corridor they had reached the point of no return which was measured from the first solely by the light they carried with them.

....

I want to be with you.
You cant.
Please.
You cant. You have to carry the fire.
I dont know how to.
Yes you do.
Is it real? The fire?
Yes it is.
Where is it? I dont know where it is.
Yes you do. It's inside you. It was always there. I can see it.

-Cormac McCarthy
 The Road

boxes

"He made the boxes because he was lonely. He didn't have anyone to love, and he made the boxes so he could love them, and so people would know that he existed, and because birds are free and the boxes are hiding places for the birds so they will feel safe, and he wanted to be free and be safe. The boxes are for him so he can be a bird."

-Audrey Niffenegger

The Time Traveler's Wife

Alone

You cannot fully read a book without being alone. But through this very solitude you become intimately involved with people whom you might never have met otherwise, because they have been dead for centuries or because they spoke languages you cannot understand. And nonetheless, they have become your closest friends, your wisest advisors, the wizards that hypnotize you, the lovers you have always dreamed of.

~Antonio Munoz Molinas, "The Power of the Pen"


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Time

There was a smell of Time in the air tonight....What sis Time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if you wondered what Time sounded like, it sounded like water running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping sown upon hollow box-lids, and rain.

~Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles


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Asleep

The soul is silent.
If it speaks at all
it speaks in dreams.

~Louise Gluck, "Child Crying Out"


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He sits down on a hill and sings. They are songs of magic, strong enoughto wake the dead to life. Softly, cautiously, his song rises, then it grows louder and more insistent, until the turf opens up and the cold earth cracks.

~Tor Age Bringsvaerd, The Wild Gods

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Fate

Does the walker choose the path or the path the walker?

~Garth Nix, Sabriel


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Alive

The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn't thought about. At that moment he's alive and you leave it to him.

~Graham Greene, Advice to Writers


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Finding Yourself

And leafing through old books we sometimes find
A dark, oracular phrase is underlined.
You once were here, but in time out of mind.

~Rainer Maria Rilke, "Improvisations of the Caprisian Winter"


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Clean

So far as he was concerned, as yet, there might never have been such a thing as a particle of sorrow on the gay, sweet surface of the dew-glittering earth.

~T.H. White, The Once and Future King



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Worlds

I lost a world the other day.
Has anybody found it?
You'll know it by the row of stars
Around its forehead bound.

A rich man might not notice it;
Yet to my frugal eye
Of more esteem than ducats.
Oh, find it, sire, for me!

~Emily Dickinson, Number 181, Collected Poems



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Mortality

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
There was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I would shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of like,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

~Billy Collins, "On Turning Ten"


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The Highwayman

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding--
Riding--riding,
The highwayman came riding up to the old inn door.

~Alfred Noyes, "The Highwayman"



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Hark, the footsteps of the night
Fade in silence long.
Quiet chirps my reading light
Like a cricket's song.

Books inviting us to read
On the bookshelves stand.
Piers for bridges that will lead
Into fairyland.

~Ranier Maria Rilke, "Vigels III," from Sacrifice to the Lares



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I Am...

I am the song that sings the bird.
I am the leaf that grows the land.
I am the tide that moves the moon.
I am the stream that halts the sand.
I am the cloud that drives the storm.
I am the earth that lights the sun.
I am the fire that strikes the stone.
I am the clay that shapes the hand.
I am the word that speaks the man.


~Charles Causley, "I Am the Song"


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Yet Bastien knew he couldn't leave without the book. It was clear to him that he had only come to the shop because of this book. It had called to him in some mysterious way, because it wanted to be his, because it had somehow always belonged to him.

~Michael Ende, The Neverending Story


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In books I meet the dead as if they were alive,
in books I see what is yet to come...
All things decay and pass with time...
all fame would fall victim to oblivion
if God had not given mortal men the book to aid them.

~Richard de Bury, The Philobiblon



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She liked his tears so much that she put out her beautiful finger and let them run over it.

Her voice was so low that at first he could not make out what she said. Then he made it out. She was saying that she thought she could get well again if children believed in faeries.

~J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan


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For the good of all

"If I were to be made a knight," said Wart, staring dreamily into the fire, "I should....pray to God to let me encounter all teh evil in the world in my own person, so that if I conquered there would be none left, and, if I were defeated, I would be the one to suffer for it."

"That would be extremely presumptuous of you," said Merlin, "and you would be conquered, and you would suffer for it."

T.H. White, The Sword in the Stone


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Adventures

She spoke to the King, hoping he would forbid his son to go, but he said: "Well, dear, it's true that adventures are good for people even when they are very young. Adventures can get into a person's blood even if he doesn't remember having them."

~Eva Ibbotson, The Secret of Platform 13


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My library was dukedom large enough.

~Shakespeare, The Tempest


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Summer Nights

What child unable to sleep on a warm summer night hasn't thought he saw Peter Pan's sailing ship in the sky? I will teach you how to see that ship.

~Roberto Cotroneo, When a Child on a Summer Morning

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Edible

Some books should be tasted
some devoured,
but only a few
should be chewed and digested thoroughly.

~Cornelia Funke, Inkheart


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Sometimes, when you fall, you fly.

~Neil Gaiman

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i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

~e.e. cummings


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It always ends. That's what gives it value.

~Neil Gaiman


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Birdwings

Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror
up to where you're bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting
                                                                    and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.

-Rumi

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Theatre

For one day, when Miss Ophelia had driven into a snowstorm in her car and was stuck, she suddenly saw a vast shadow looming up in front of her, a shadow much darker than all the rest.

>>Are you  another shadow that nobody wants?<< she asked.

>>Yes,<< said the shadow slowly, >>I think you could say so.<<

>>Do you want to come and stay with me too?<< asked Miss Ophelia.

>>Would you take me in?<< asked the great shadow, coming closer.

>>Well, I do have more than enough shadows already,<< said the little old lady, >>but you must have some place to go.<<

>>Don't you want to know my name first?<< asked the shadow.

>>What is it, then?<<

>>They call me Death.<<

Then there was silence for quite a long time.

>>Will you take me in?<< asked the shadow at last, gently.

>>Yes,<< said Miss Ophelia, >>come along.<<

Then the great, cold shadow wrapped itself around her, and the whole world went dark. But suddenly she felt as if she were opening a brand-new pair of eyes, eyes that were young and clear, not old and short-sighted any more. And she didn't need glasses now to see where she was.

She was standing at the gates of Heaven, and around her stood a throng of beautiful figures in bright clothes, smiling at her.

>>Who are you all?<< asked Miss Ophelia.

>>Don't you know us?<< they said. >>We're all the shadows you took in. We are free now; we needn't wander any more.<<

Then the gates of Heaven opened, and the bright figures went in, taking little old Miss Ophelia with them. They led her to what looked like a wonderful palace, though it was really the finest and most magnificent theatre ever seen.

Above the entrance there were big gold letters, saying:

OPHELIA'S THEATRE OF LIGHT

So ever since, Miss Ophelia's shadows have been acting tales of the fortunes of mankind for the angels in the beautiful language of the poets, for the angels know that language too, and it tells them how wretched yet wonderful, how sad yet comical it is to be human and live on Earth.

Miss Ophelia whispers her actors the words of their parts, in case they get stuck. And some say that the Lord God himself sometimes comes to watch the plays. But nobody knows for sure.

-Michael Ende

Ophelia's Shadow Theatre

Menagerie

My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, 

and I intend to end up there.

-Rumi

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Stars

"And so we came forth, and once again beheld the stars."

~Dante's Inferno

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Hill-haunted

"Hill-haunted, whose vision of the earth was mountainwalled, he saw the golden cities sicken in his eye, the opulent dark splendors turn to dingy grey. His brain was sick with the million pictures his body sickened on a hundred princely wines."

~Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

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Neverland

"On these magic shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more."

-Peter Pan

Sir James Matthew Barrie

We Are.

we are the music makers,
we are the dreamers of the dream.
wandering by lone sea breakers,
and sitting by desolate streams.
world losers and world forsakers,
for whom the pale moon gleams.
yet we are movers and shakers of the world
forever it seems.

~Arthur O'Shaughnessy

Starlight

"Stars flashed to like in some too-close distance. They burned her up for a few brief heartbeats."

~Melissa Marr, Ink Exchange

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