quiet timelove

“What it came down to was this: they loved each other, but they couldn’t get along. Did that make any sense to him?

No, it made no sense to him at all. The boy was utterly confused by then, but he was too afraid to admit it to his father, who was making every effort to treat him as an adult, but he wasn’t up to the job that day, the world of adults was unfathomable to him at that point in his life, and he couldn’t grasp the paradox of love and discord coexisting in equal measure. It had to be one or the other, love or not-love, but not love and not-love at the same time.”

- Paul Auster, Sunset Park

∞07:32 pm, by quiet-time ∩1

“It was a tiny kitten when it came and could drink its milk only from a nipple. Fortunately, they still had Sophia’s baby bottle in the attic. In the beginning, the kitten slept in a tea cozy to keep warm, but when it found its legs they let it sleep in the cottage in Sophia’s bed. It had its own pillow, next to hers.

It was a gray fisherman’s cat and it grew fast. One day, it left the cottage and moved into the house, where it spent its nights under the bed in the box where they kept the dirty dishes. It had odd ideas of its own even then. Sophia carried the cat back to the cottage and tried as hard as she could to ingratiate herself, but the more love she gave it, the quicker it fled back to the dish box. When the box got too full, the cat would howl and someone would have to wash the dishes. Its name was Ma Petite, but they called it Moppy.

‘It’s funny about love,’ Sophia said. ‘The more you love someone, the less he likes you back.’

‘That’s very true,’ Grandmother observed. ‘And so what do you do?’

‘You go on loving,’ Sophia said threateningly. ‘You love harder and harder.’

Her grandmother sighed and said nothing.”

- Tove Jansson, The Summer Book

∞06:27 pm, by quiet-time

[love] [quote] [Tove Jansson] [cat]

She was holding the wheel, she felt self-confident and beautiful, and it occurred to her: Was it really love that bound her to Klima - or only the fear of losing him? And even if at the beginning that fear had been an anxious form of love, had not love (overworked and exhausted) faded, leaving but an empty form? Perhaps all she had left was fear itself, fear without love? And what would remain if she ever lost that fear?

Milan Kundera, The Farewell Party

∞02:22 am, by quiet-time

[kundera] [Milan Kundera] [literature] [love] [the end of my relationship]

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul hurt, a real ‘gets inside you and rips you apart’ pain. I hate love.

Neil Gaiman (via dirtyfish) (via kindelling) (via slagath0r)

∞01:34 am, reblogged by quiet-time ∩11

[love] [neil gaiman] [truth]

Why Do Fools (And Philosophers) Fall In Love?

“[Plato] knows how we will succeed in the search [for love]: through lies, through believing what one should not believe (as one believes in a play), with artfulness, through art.”

∞06:19 pm, by quiet-time

[love] [philosophy]

+

∞12:21 am, by quiet-time ∩1

[love] [comic]

Men are allowed, indeed, supposed, to be louts. What they are not supposed to be is objects of importance to women. The more intelligent you claim to be, the more ironical and distant must be your relation to love.

Cristina Nehring, A Vindication of Love

∞01:09 am, by quiet-time

[love] [feminism]

"I ducked. And I waited. And it worked."

This installment of “Modern Love” makes me sad.

∞03:19 pm, by quiet-time

[love] [nyt]

This is what happened in love. One of you cried a lot and then both of you grew sarcastic.

Lorrie Moore, Like Life

∞12:24 am, by quiet-time

[love] [relationships]

Every love relationship is based on unwritten conventions rashly agreed upon by the lovers during the first weeks of their love. On the one hand, they are living a sort of dream; on the other, without realizing it, they are drawing up the fine print of their contracts like the most hard-nosed of lawyers. O lovers! Be wary during those perilous first days! If you serve the other party breakfast in bed, you will be obliged to continue same in perpetuity or face charges of animosity and treason!

Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

∞06:08 pm, by quiet-time ∩1

[love] [relationships] [kundera]