the golden age

‘Love in action is a harsh and terrible thing compared with love in dreams.’ - Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

‘But i was brave / I resisted / I set myself on fire.’ - Louise Gluck, from Stars

‘You are filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is not.’ - Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried

‘There is a time for reciting poetry, and a time for fists.’ - Roberto Bolano, The Savage Detectives

‘Your courage will still be shown in the little ways, / each spring will be a sword you’ll sharpen, / those you love will live in a fever of love, / and you’ll bargain with the calendar / and at the last moment / when death opens the back door / you’ll put on your carpet slippers / and stride out.’ - Anne Sexton, Courage

‘if all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.’ - Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

‘What can you do on this earth but catch at whatever comes near you, with both hands, until your fingers are broken?’ - Tenessee Williams, Orpheus Descending

RAVENCLAW

‘I shall be a clinger to the outsides of words all my life.’ - Virginia Woolf, The Waves

‘People do not seem to realise their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.’ - Ralph Waldo Emerson

‘We have to create. it is the only thing louder than destruction.’ - Andrea Gibson, Yellow Bird

‘I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.’ - Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

‘Listen: you are not yourself, you are as leaky a vessel that was ever made, you have spent vast amounts of your life as someone else, as people who died long ago, as people who never lived, as strangers you never met.’ - Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby

‘The best thing for being sad is to learn something.’ - T.H White, The Once and Future King

‘A word after a word after a word is power.’ - Margaret Atwood

‘I had lines inside me, a string of guiding lights. I had language.’ - Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal

SLYTHERIN

‘You recognize your insignificance?…Recognize it before God; perhaps, too, in the presence of beauty, intelligence, nature, but not before people. Among people you must be conscious of your dignity. Why, you are not a rascal, you are an honest man, aren’t you? Well, respect yourself as an honest man and know that an honest man is not something worthless. Don’t confound “being humble” with “recognizing one’s worthlessness.’ - Anton Chekhov, from a letter to Mihail Chekhov

‘As it is, I can’t settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed be me.’ - Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit

‘And we are magic talking to itself / noisy and alone. I am queen of all my sins / forgotten. Am I still lost? / Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself.’ - Anne Sexton, You, Doctor Martin

‘He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would be drunk: I said I should fall asleep in his; and he said he could not breathe in mine.’ - Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

‘Unconquered in my soul the Tyrant rules me still– Life bows to me, but love I cannot kill!’ - Emily Bronte, Light Up Thy Walls

HUFFLEPUFF

‘We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of the world.’ - Jack Gilbert, A Brief for the Defence

‘But I believe in intention and I believe in work. I believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worst selves for our better ones.’ - Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams

“You have to protect yourself from sadness. sadness is very close to hate. Let me tell you this. This is the thing I learned. If you take in someone else’s poison – thinking you can cure them by sharing it – you will instead store it within you.’ - Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

’Life, although it be but an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and i will defend it.’ - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

‘But a chair, sunlight, flowers: these are not to be dismissed. I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight.’ - Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

More fictional couples where the whole Belligerent Sexual Tension thing actually plays out the way it does in reality.

Struggling not to crack a smile as you call them a total asshole.

Deliberately feeding each other straight lines for insulting comebacks, and thinking you’re being subtle about it.

Managing to pronounce “fuck you” as a term of endearment.

Acting theatrically offended by extremely minor flaws.

Telling each other to shut up when you didn’t even say anything yet.

Having entire arguments so well-practiced that you can set your partner off with a single word or gesture, and doing so on purpose.