it's always been better to never be in the spotlight
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Livinthebookshelf - Livin The Bookshelf - Tumblr Blog
—Virginia Woolf
"The Birth of a Poet", Paruyr Sevak (translated by Tathev Simonyan)
📸 johnybegood._
𝔴𝔢’𝔯𝔢 𝔞𝔩𝔩 𝔞 𝔟𝔦𝔱 𝔱𝔦𝔯𝔢𝔡 𝔞𝔱 𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔰 𝔭𝔬𝔦𝔫𝔱
The problem with getting into actual academic literature instead of only reading the secret history is that suddenly there’s no fandom around the life altering quotes that you’re reading you’re just alone with your knowledge
Charlotte Brontë, from “Jane Eyre”
John Singer Sargent, detail of Elizabeth Winthrop Chanler, 1893
"The Unbearable Lightness of Being", Milan Kundera (translated by Michael Henry Heim)
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
“I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Madman
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
“All freedom is relative—you know too well—and sometimes it’s no freedom at all, but simply the cage widening far away from you, the bars abstracted with distance but still there, as when they “free” wild animals into nature preserves only to contain them yet again by larger borders. But I took it anyway, that widening. Because sometimes not seeing the bars is enough”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved
― Jean-Paul Sartre
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom.
― Maya Angelou, The Complete Collected Poems
― Franz Kafka, Amerika
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
― Viktor E. Frankl
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
“Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
― E.B. White, The Trumpet of the Swan
“This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.”
― Kafka Franz, Diaries, 1910-1923
― John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman
“And I want to be held down. I don’t know what to do with the horrifying freedom that can destroy me.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.
― Franz Kafka
can’t imagine living in a world where authors aren’t allowed to explore darker themes and topics through literature
Wioleta Marut
Maggie Smith as the fairy queen Titania, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1977)
Anne de Marcken, from "It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over," published in 2024
𝔞𝔲𝔱𝔲𝔪𝔫 𝔰𝔱𝔲𝔡𝔶 𝔰𝔢𝔰𝔰𝔦𝔬𝔫𝔰 🍃🍂🍁
