Sparks Fly Upward

“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.” Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (via 4mbivalent)

(via 4mbivalent-deactivated20130424)

“We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.” John Steinbeck, East of Eden (via danseurs)

“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted. You should live several lives while reading it.” William Styron (via readingandriting)

(Source: thinkexist.com, via readingandriting)

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Ernest Hemingway (via aquaticwonder)

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.” Carl Sagan, on books (via stateless1972)