NokiMo
House of Fortitude

House of Fortitude

patreon


House of Fortitude posts

- Frances Hodgson Burnett / The Secret Garden

"In each century since the beginning of the world wonderful things have been discovered. In the last century more amazing things were found out than in any century before. In this new century hundr...

View Post

- Anthony Burgess / A Dead Man in Deptford

"- Does he not also tell some legend of a unity capriciously split by the gods, so that half goes wandering in search of half? But that is a pretty doctrine of male soul and female soul conjoined i...

View Post

- Jenny Holzer / Arno (text engraved on a pair of white marble benches)

"I WALK IN
I SEE YOU
I WATCH YOU
I SCAN YOU
I WAIT FOR YOU
I TICKLE YOU
I TEASE YOU
I SEARCH YOU
I BREATHE YOU
I TALK 
I SMILE
I TOUCH YOUR HAIR
YOU ARE THE...

View Post

- Maggie Nelson / Bluets

"1. Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color. Suppose I were to speak this as though it were a confession; suppose I shredded my napkin as we spoke. It began slo...

View Post

- Fyodor Dostoevsky / The Brothers Karamazov

Part II.
Book VI: The Russian Monk
Chapter 3: Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zossima. The Russian Monk and his possible Significance.

FATHERS and teachers, what is the monk? I...

View Post

- Madeline Miller / Circe

“I wake sometimes in the dark terrified by my life's precariousness, its thready breath. Beside me, my husband's pulse beats at his throat; in their beds, my children's skin shows every faintest ...

View Post

- Umberto Eco / Foucault's Pendulum

"That was when I saw the Pendulum.

The sphere, hanging from a long wire set into the ceiling of the choir, swayed back and forth with isochronal majesty.

I knew--but anyone could have...

View Post

- Margaret Atwood / Selected Poems 2: 1976 - 1986

Variation on the Word Sleep

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to ...

View Post

- Wendell Berry / Given

“How to be a Poet

(to remind myself)

i

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
t...

View Post

- Janet Fitch / White Oleander

“
Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand y...

View Post

- Olga Tokarczuk / Primeval and Other Times

“The Time of the Lime Trees

There are lime trees lining the Highway leading from Jeszkotle to the Kielce road. They looked the same at the beginning, and they will look the same at the end...

View Post

- Fyodor Dostoevsky / The Brothers Karamazov

Part I.
Book II: An Unfortunate Gathering
Chapter 2: The Old Buffoon

THEY entered the room almost at the same moment that the elder came in from his bedroom. There were already in the c...

View Post

- Sylvia Plath / Mirror

"I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful‚
The eye of a little g...

View Post

- Søren Kierkegaard / The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air 

"What is joy, or what is it to be joyful? It is truly to be present to oneself; but truly to be present to oneself is this “today,” this to be today, truly to b...

View Post

- Ray Bradbury / Zen in the Art of Writing

“If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful du...

View Post

- Sally Mann / Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs

“As for me, I see both beauty and the dark side of the things; the loveliness of cornfields and full sails, but the ruin as the well. And I see them at the same time, and chary of that ecstasy. T...

View Post

- Italo Calvino / If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

“In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of ...

View Post

- John Banville / The Untouchable

"Boy. I miss him, despite everything. Oh, I know, he was a clown, cruel, dishonest, slovenly, careless of himself and others, but for all that he maintained a curious kind of—what shall I call it...

View Post

-Farid al-Din 'Attar / The Conference of the Birds

"Moths gathered in a fluttering throng one night
To learn the truth about the candle light,
And they decided one of them should go
To gather news of the elusive glow.
One flew till in t...

View Post

- Franz Kafka / A Hunger Artist

"During these last decades the interest in professional fasting has markedly diminished. It used to pay very well to stage such great performances under one’s own management, but today that is qu...

View Post

- Vladimir Nabokov / Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

"Hammock and honey: eighty years later he could still recall with the young pang of the original joy his falling in love with Ada. Memory met imagination halfway in the hammock of his boyhood's daw...

View Post

- Gerald Murnane / Border Districts

“I consider myself a student of colours and shades and hues and tints. Crimson lake, burnt umber, ultramarine … I was too clumsy as a child to paint with my moistened brush the sc...

View Post

- Olga Tokarczuk / Primeval and Other Times

“It is strange that God, who is beyond the limits of time, manifests Himself within time and its transformations. If you don’t know “where” God is – and people sometimes ask such question...

View Post

- Jenny Hval / Girls against God (translated by Marjam Idriss)

"The word BAND is quite similar to the word BOND. Have you thought about that? A band is a bond between people. A band can emerge unexpectedly, when you talk or suddenly say the same things, or men...

View Post

- Ben Okri / Astonishing the Gods

“Are you comfortable? Are you all right? Is the wind too cold for you? Should I go and fetch you some more fruits? I love your silence. It is so wise. It listens. It invites warmth. I love your l...

View Post

- Rainer Maria Rilke / Letters to a Young Poet / Letter 4

"Worpswede, near Bremen

    July 16, 1903

     About ten days ago I left Paris, tired and quite sick, and traveled to this great northern ...

View Post

- Rainer Maria Rilke / Letters to a Young Poet / Letter 1

"Paris
February 17, 1903

Dear Sir,

Your letter arrived just a few days ago. I want to thank you for the great confidence you have placed in me. That is all I can do. I cannot discu...

View Post

- Jon Fosse / Scenes from a Childhood

IT’S MAYBE FOUR O’CLOCK

It’s maybe four o’clock when Trygve and I go out to the old barn. My grandfather built this barn but now it’s falling apart, the unpainted ...

View Post

- Olga Tokarczuk / Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

“Sparks come from the very source of light and are made of the purest brightness—so say the oldest legends. When a human Being is to be born, a spark begins to fall. First it flies through the ...

View Post

- Janet Fitch / White Oleander

“But then I realized, they weren't calling out for their own mothers. Not those weak women, those victims. Drug addicts, shopaholics, cookie bakers. They didn't mean the women who let them down, ...

View Post