#ghostingpen

32. What is a line from a poem/novel/fanfic etc that you return to from time and time again? How did you find it? What does it mean to you?

i was HOPING someone would ask me this!!!! here you go.

from the fic of all time, those who stand for nothing fall for anything. the first time i read this fic was 2014 on ffn and i almost stood up and gave this a standing ovation:

Let me be clear, I do not smoke. It is dangerous both to yourself and others. A leading cause of cancer, heart and respiratory disease, cot death, infertility, puts immense pressure on the health service, is a public nuisance, is economically unsound (although the government approve of it due to the healthy injection the taxes bring to the treasury, but we don't talk about that), is a littering problem, the cause for many house fires, and affects your skin, teeth, hair and clothes. But everyone smokes occasionally for that whisper of hedonism. It's always been this way. It was one of the first subtleties I learned in the secret language of politicians. It says that I am a wild card. My loyalty and morals are for sale, so approach me with an offer, if you have one. All this may or may not be true; I appear to do one thing when I'm actually doing the opposite. My heart is the purest gold and no one can touch it, but I have to be seen to give out invitations. You should always make yourself as accessible as possible to the benefits which can come from it. There are many hidden meanings in everything we do. The choices we make must be made with consideration and care. My doctor assures me that he doesn't even think of me as a smoker.

from dostoevsky's white nights:

I don't know how to be silent when my heart is speaking.

from murakami's men without women:

Lampreys think very lamprey-like thoughts. About lamprey-like topics in a context that’s very lamprey-like. There are no words for those thoughts. They belong to the world of water. It’s like when we were in the womb. We were thinking things in there, but we can’t express those thoughts in the language we use out here. Right?

from in a station of the metro by ezra pound:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough

from nabokov's lolita:

I leaf again and again through these miserable memories, and keep asking myself, was it then, in the glitter of that remote summer, that the rift in my life began?

from derrida's the work of mourning:

The world suspended by some unique tear … reflecting disappearance itself: the world, the whole world, the world itself, for death takes from us not only some particular life within the world, some moment that belongs to us, but, each time, without limit, someone through whom the world, and first of all our own world, will have opened up… A stretch of living self … a world that is for us the whole world, the only world … sinks into an abyss.

from han kang's the vegetarian:

Before my wife turned vegetarian, I'd always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way.

from min jin lee's pachinko:

"Any fool can make a marinade and grill meat, but the customer needs a fine array of banchan to make him feel like he’s dining like a king, wouldn’t you say?"