Within The Bowels Of These Elements,Where We Are Torturd And Remain For Ever:Hell Hath No Limits, Nor

Within the bowels of these elements, Where we are tortur’d and remain for ever: Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib’d In one self place; for where we are is hell, And where hell is, there must we ever be: And, to conclude, when all the world dissolves, And every creature shall be purified, All places shall be hell that are not heaven.

Dr. Faustus, Christopher Marlowe (via wholesomeobsessive)

Less begins to imagine (as the mayor doodles on in Italian) that he has been mistranslated, or—what is the word?—supertranslated, his novel given to an unacknowledged genius of a poet (Giuliana Monti is her name) who worked his mediocre English into breathtaking Italian. His book was ignored in America, barely reviewed, without a single interview request by a journalist (his publicist said, “Autumn is a bad time”), but here in Italy he understands he is taken seriously. In autumn, no less. Just this morning, he was shown the articles in la Repubblica, Corriere della Sera, local papers, and Catholic papers, with photographs of him in his blue suit, gazing upward at the camera with the same worried unsophisticated sapphire gaze he showed to Robert on that beach. But it should be a photograph of Giuliana Monti. She has written this book. Rewritten, upwritten, outwritten Less himself.

Andrew Sean Greer, Less (via wholesomeobsessive)

It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.

Autumn by Ali Smith (via famousfirstsentences)

Everyone had another sort of life up their sleeve that might have made them happy.

Liane Moriarty, Truly Madly Guilty (via wholesomeobsessive)

The tragicomic business of being alive is getting to him.

— Less, Andrew Sean Greer

Back home, Connell’s shyness never seemed like much of an obstacle to his social life, because everyone knew who he was already, and there was never any need to introduce himself or create impressions about his personality. If anything, his personality seemed like something external to himself, managed by the opinions of others, rather than anything he individually did or produced. Now he has a sense of invisibility, nothingness, with no reputation to recommend him to anything.

Normal People by Sally Rooney (via wholesomeobsessive)