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House of Fortitude

House of Fortitude

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House of Fortitude posts

- Ocean Vuong / On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Maybe in the next life we'll meet each other for the first time- believing in everything but the harm we're capable of. Maybe we'll be the opposite of buffaloes. We'll grow wings and spill over ...

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- Henry Miller / Sexus: The Rosy Crucifixion I

"To be sick, to be neurotic, if you like, is to ask for guarantees. The neurotic is the flounder that lies on the bed of the river, securely settled in the mud, waiting to be speared. For him death...

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- John Steinbeck / The Grapes of Wrath

"The Western land, nervous under the beginning change. The Western states, nervous as horses before a thunderstorm. The great owners, nervous, sensing a change, knowing nothing of the nature of the...

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- Anis Mojgani / Cradle

"Set the warriors to sea in a ship stacked with shields, layers of swords, mountains of gold. Lay them out with their wife. With their child. Lay them out with their livestock, with the whole farm....

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- William Gaddis / The Recognitions

“The painter knows, sadly enough, that experience does not suffice unto itself, has no proportion, dimension, perspective, mournfully he eats his life but is not allowed to digest it, this being ...

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- William Gaddis / J R

“You see I still have confidence in you sir, or should I say the artist who dwells within you, the artist who disdains such mundane details as selecting a fresh shirt in the morning, who steps fo...

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- Kahlil Gibran / The Prophet (on pleasure)

Then a hermit, who visited the city once a year, came forth and said, Speak to us of Pleasure.

And he answered, saying:

Pleasure is a freedom-song,

But i...

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- Kahlil Gibran / The Prophet (on beauty)

"And a poet said, Speak to us of Beauty.

And he answered:

Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide...

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- William Gaddis / The Recognitions

“It was through this imposed accumulation of chaos that she struggled to move now: beyond it lay simplicity, unmeasurable, residence of perfection, where nothing was created, where originality di...

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- Agnes Callard / Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming

"When one makes a radical life change, one does not submit oneself to be changed by some transformative event or object; one’s agency runs all the way through to the endpoint. The nature of that ...

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- Hernan Diaz / In the Distance

“Corrupting, there, forsaken, becoming, already, nothing.
"And thy corpse shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall frighten them away to thin...

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- Annie Dillard / Pilgrim At Tinker Creek

"Thomas Merton wrote, “there is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.” There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle aroun...

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- Hernan Diaz / Trust

“Intimacy can be an unbearable burden for those who, first experiencing it after a lifetime of proud self-sufficiency, suddenly realize it makes their world complete. Finding bliss becomes one wi...

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- John Steinbeck / The Grapes of Wrath

“Ma was heavy, but not fat; thick with child-bearing and work. She wore a loose Mother Hubbard of gray cloth in which there had once been colored flowers, but the color was washed out now, so tha...

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- Hernan Diaz / In the Distance

“A naturalist should look at the world with warm affection, if not ardent love. The life the scalpel has ended ought to be honored by a caring, devoted appreciation for that creature’s unrepeat...

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- Ted Chiang / Liking What You See: A Documentary

"Think of cocaine. In its natural form, as coca leaves, it's appealing, but not to an extent that it usually becomes a problem. But refine it, purity it, and you get a compound that hits your pleas...

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- André Breton / Freedom of Love (L'union libre)

"My wife with the hair of a wood fire
With the thoughts of heat lightning
With the waist of an hourglass
With the waist of an otter in the teeth of a tiger
My wife with the lips of a co...

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- Albert Camus / The Rebel

“Everyone tries to make his life a work of art. We want love to last and we know that it does not last; even if, by some miracle, it were to last a whole lifetime, it would still be incomplete. P...

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- Madeleine L'Engle / A Ring of Endless Light

"The earth will never be the same again


Rock, water, tree, iron, share this grief


As distant stars participate in the pain.


A candle snuffed, a falling star or ...

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- Ted Chiang / Exhalation

“I wish you well, explorer, but I wonder: Does the same fate that befell me await you? I can only imagine that it must, that the tendency toward equilibrium is not a trait peculiar to our univers...

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- Mark Z. Danielewski / House of Leaves

“With a little luck, you’ll dismiss this labor, react as Zampanò had hoped, call it needlessly complicated, pointlessly obtuse, prolix––your word––, ridiculously conceived, and you’l...

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- Alejandra Pizarnik / Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962 - 1972

“Paths of the mirror"

I
And above all else, to look with innocence. As if nothing was happening, which is true.

II
But you, I want to look at you until your face escapes from ...

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- Octavia Butler / Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998)

The Book of the Living I

Earthseed is a religion inspired by the science fiction of Octavia Butler, specifically her books, Parable of the Sower (1993) and View Post

- Paul Auster / The Brooklyn Follies

“Try to roll with the punches. Keep your chin up. Don’t take any wooden nickels. Vote Democrat in every election. Ride your bike in the park. Dream about my perfect, golden body. Take your vita...

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- Epictetus / Enchiridion

“How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself and in no instance bypass the discriminations of reason? You have been given the principles that you ought to endorse, and ...

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- Henry Miller / The World of Sex

"Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or as heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, ever...

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- Miguel de Cervantes / Don Quixote

Chapter I

Which treats of the character and pursuits of the famous gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha

In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have...

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- Henry Miller / SEXUS: THE ROSY CRUCIFIXION, BOOK I

“There is a theory that when a planet, like our earth for example, has manifested every form of life, when it has fulfilled itself to the point of exhaustion, it crumbles to bits and is dispersed...

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- Julian Barnes / A History of the World in 10½ Chapters

“The history of the world? Just voices echoing in the dark; images that burn for a few centuries and then fade; stories, old stories that sometimes seem to overlap; strange links, impertinent con...

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- H.P. Lovecraft / The Transition of H. P. Lovecraft: The Road to Madness

“But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean. Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent. All ...

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