I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest… Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar 1963 #booksky #pocketmirror #ghostship

“A safe fairyland is untrue to all worlds.” JRR Tolkien The Hobbit 1937 So make friends with danger (or chili spiced sipping chocolate) #booksky #newmexico #sippingchocolate #newmexicohumanities #humanities #fairies #fairyland #pueblo #chilis #cacao #mesoamerica #Oaxaca #porcelain #cocoa #read

Like it or not, pregnancy has a plot, a story. Jazmina Barrera Linea Nigra 2022 #booksky #bookcover #ThreeActPlay #spanishliterature #childbearing #earthquakes #eclipses #lactation #LowieHollowell #CreativeLabor #memoir #manifesto

If change is to come, it will have to come from the margins. Wendell Berry The Unsettling of America 1977 #booksky #culture #agriculture #environmentalism #climatecrisis #labor #pastoral

The sky isn’t more beautiful if you have perfect skin. Music doesn’t sound more interesting if you have a six-pack. Dogs aren’t better company if you’re famous. P izza tastes good regardless of your job title. Matt Haig The Comfort Book 2021 #PeanutButterToast #booksky #hope #depression #marmalade

The lover's fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits. Fragments d’un discours amoureux (A Lover's Discourse) Roland Barthes 1977 #YourLoveIsMyDrug #booksky #readingsky #FrenchTheory #FatalAttraction

As always, an educated woman was a dangerous woman. Stacy Schiff Cleopatra: A Life 2010 #booksky #empress #pharaoh #thepastisfemale #egypt #africa #romanempire #reading #readingisresistance

The quality you most admire in a man? Courage moral and physical: 'anima'—the ability to think like a woman. Also a sense of the absurd. Christopher Hitchens Hitch-22 2010 #booksky #anima #absurd #womenaretooemotional #journalist

There on the horse rode Power, through the gateway of triumphal entries, with dazzling features, but graven as in stone. The Power which transcends us and whose hooves we kiss. Heinrich Mann The Loyal Subject/Man of Straw 1918 #booksky #militarism #commercialism #germany #corruptsociety #reading

It is all a dream—a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought—a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities! Mark Twain The Mysterious Stranger 1908 #booksky #existentialcrisis #existentialism #satan

Flowers, by themselves, fall. Water too runs alone. One shared longing, Parted between two. Unrelenting, it falls from the brows, only to rise in the heart. Li Qingzhao Trans. Wendy Chen The Magpie at Night 2025 #booksky #poetryintranslation #songdynasty #chineseliterature #chinesepoetry #poem

“I identify always with Aeneas, the Trojan refugee who desperately tries to fulfill his destiny in a world that holds no place for him.” Marie Benedict Victoria Christopher Murray The Personal Librarian 2021 #booksky #passing #segregation #libraryofcongress #blacklibrarian #manuscript #civilrights

They move the cafe out to the back so anyone who wants a drink or a snack has to traipse all the way through the store. And naturally, on their way there—human nature being what it is—they’ll pick up a little something extra. Nicola Barker Darkmans 2007 #consumerism #booksky #manbooker #shortlist

Blood flowed in Bluebeard’s house,—in the slaughterhouses,—in the amphitheaters, where God’s seal turned the windows livid. Blood and milk flowed. John Ashbery translating Arthur #Rimbaud Illuminations 2011 #poetryintranslation #booksky #poetrymonth #prosepoem #poetsky #reading #resistance

There are no reasons. She is obliged to be who she is. We all are. Reasons are in books. Philip Roth American Pastoral 1998 #booksky #pulitzerprize #pulitzer #america #americandream #1968 #reading #readingisresistance

If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die. Ishmael Beah A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier 1997 #booksky #childhood #resilience #sierraleone #reading #humanrights #resistance

…tightening the rope until there was no more resistance. So that’s what it was to kill. Pilar Quintana The Bitch 2017 #booksky #dogs #colombia #motherhood #love #violence #perimenopause #menopause #BibliotecaDeNarrativaPrize #translation #shelterdog #puppy #pacific #reading #spanish #literature

Everyone at some point in their lives should have a long great love affair with a magnificent lunatic. Lorrie Moore I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home 2023 #booksky #death #meditation #reality #grief #grieving #haunted #ghoststory #ghosts #novelsky #bronx #reading #readingisresistance #thepast

So self-acceptance does not mean self-admiration or even self-liking at every moment of our lives, but tolerance for all our emotions, including those that make us feel uncomfortable. Gabor Maté Scattered Minds 1999 #booksky #adhd #audhd #attentiondeficit #uncomfortablefeelings #selftolerance

I see the long years of our marriage ahead like a great spacious welcoming firelit room…I want to show you off. I want to wave you around in pride. According to Mark Penelope Lively 1984 #booksky #love #affair #romance #bookerprize #biography #biographer #england #mystery #reading #pride #lovewins

Poetry’s fundamental figure, metaphor—opportunistic and changeable as DNA—roots itself in error and the grubbiness of language, relying less on likeness than the gap failure opens. Katherine Coles The Stranger I Become 2021 #booksky #poetrysky #walking #looking #writing #metaphor #retinas #poem

“If you’re a frustrated interior decorator, sewing for your home is the answer to your problems.” Needlecraft for the Home 1952 #booksky #vintage #crochet #needlepoint #knitting #fabricart #textileart #woobles #embroidery #interiordecoration #interiordesign #softlife #homemaking #nesting #reading

"It's a wonderful effect," speaking then as she gently touched the blouse-front, a net of sheen grey fainter than pearl, a dove-down diaphanous grey, fashioned, as it were, to hold in a web of insinuation that treasure next of lace..." Terry Southern Flash and Filigree 1958 #booksky #beatnik #beat

Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except the best. Henry van Dyke The Ruling Passion 1901 #booksky #bookcover #coverart #victorian #canadian #frenchcanadian #shortstory #moral #anecdote #reading #rural #resistance #buyused #buybooks #read #blossoms

The hardest thing of all to see is what is really there. Arati Kumar-Rao Marginlands: A Journey into India’s Vanishing Landscapes 2023 #booksky #environment #culture #memory #springequinox #vernalequinox #equinox #spring #renewal #destruction #slowviolence #regrowth #india #landscape #reading

…adults…like children, wander about this earth in a daze…and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The Sorrows of Young Werther 1774 #booksky #germanliterature #novel #epistolary #lovesickness #unrequitedlove #reading #resistence

“Storytelling tastes are like dietary tastes…what constitutes a satisfying meal differs from culture to culture, and those tastes are learned…” Henry Lien Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird: The Art of Eastern Storytelling 2025 🌸 🌞 ☄️ 🦢 #booksky #narratology #literarytheory #culturalstudies #readbooks

"We must bear witness to what our bodies remember, what el corazón con razón experiences, and share these with others though we be branded unpatriotic and un-­American." Gloria E. Anzaldua Luz en lo Oscuro (Light in the Dark) 2015 #booksky #criticaltheory #decolonize #decolonization #borderart

“Vocabulary words are the building blocks of the internal learning structure. Vocabulary...better define[s] a problem, seek[s] more accurate solutions, etc.” Ruby K. Payne Bridges Out of Poverty: Strategies for Professionals and Communities 2001 #booksky #wordswordswords #classmobility #vocabulary

“There are dead stars that still shine because their light is trapped in time. Where do I stand in this light, which does not strictly exist?” Don DeLillo Cosmopolis 2003 #booksky #billionaires #riots #protests #sufirap #stalkers #assassins #stockmarket #internationalmarkets #wealth #bulletproof

“Some people are just wrong every time they open their mouths.” Jonathan Gash The Grail Tree 1979 #grail #holygrail #sangreal #booksky #quest #antiques #vintage #mystery #thrifting #crime #crimefiction #thriller #antiquarian #lovejoy #reading #worldbookday #myth #legend #misogyny #1970s

“Then it occurred to me that many of these people had suffered more than Christ himself. I pondered this until I felt that my heart and mind would burst.” Sigrid Undset Kristin Lavransdatter 1920 #nobelprize #nobel #nobellaureate #booksky #medieval #norwegianliterature #historicalfiction #reading

“Gamblers and lovers really play to lose.” Lawrence Durrell The Alexandria Quartet 1957 #booksky #relativity #continuum #subject #object #egypt #worldwarII #wwii #ww2 #love #perspective #bookseries #metaphysics #locallyreal #reality #subjectivity #reading #balthazar #justine #clea #mountolive

“Now I know that speaking good English is not the measure of intelligent mind and sharp brain. English is only a language, like Yoruba and Igbo and Hausa. Nothing about it is so special, nothing about it makes anybody have sense.” Abi Daré The Girl with the Louding Voice 2020 #booksky #languages

“There are no rationalists. We all believe in fairy tales, and live in them.” G.K. Chesterton Heretics 1935 #apologetics #apologist #booksky #hgwells #kipling #nietzsche #georgebernardshaw #philosophy #religion #heterodoxy #orthodoxy #epoxy #whistler #paganism #celtophiles #theology #morality

“It was not my intention to collapse; no, I would die standing.” Knut Hamsun Hunger 1890 #modernnovel #psychologicalnovel #norwegianliterature #philosophy #booksky #poverty #housingsecurity #homelessness #foodsecurity #writing #novel #books #reading #resistance #translation #robertbly #19thC

“Insomnia is dull now, even common. What you have is too much time. Enough to visualize day, which is sad and false as carnivals are, all pinwheels & peanut brittle & beholden to the idea of brightness as paradise.” Melissa Kirsch “Sleep’s Underside” Acquainted with the Night #booksky #insomnia

"Faced with such perfect, lapidary, and truth-bearing sentences, one's only appropriate response is indeed to fall to one's knees in surrender." Terry Castle Boss Ladies, Watch Out! Essays on Women, Sex, and Writing 2002 #truthiness #womenwriters #gender #LGBTQIA+ #novel #gothic #19thcentury

“Your life is but a part of life. It began and it will go on in time beyond yourself…not of some little local interest of your own.” John Drinkwater Mary Stuart, A Play 1921 #booksky #drama #earlymodern #renaissance #marystuart #scots #perioddrama #dramaturgy #drinkwater #smalldrop #bigbucket

“All of us, it seems, have ‘somewhere to get to.’ Yet all of us…are in some ways ‘traveling through the dark,’ unaware of the moral dilemma that may arise around the next curve.” Rushworth M. Kidder How Good People Make Tough Choices 1995 #icarus #bystander #hubris #ignorance #ethics #dilemmas

“Jesus said, ‘this is how god commanded Mikhael to give the spirits of the human beings to them while they serve—as a loan.’” The Gospel of Judas 2nd Century CE #apocrypha #canon #bible #gospel #scripture #alternativehistory #revisionisthistory #religion #booksky #reading #metaphysics

“She looks like someone’s wife or a teacher or a counselor. Someone who’d be married. Someone I could marry. She leads her mob around one of the bungalows, like they’re practicing for a protest. My heart beats quicker than ever.” Rodrigo Ribera d’Ebre The Displaced 2022 #booksky #losangeles #love

"Character is a superstition, a wretched fetish." William Dean Howells A Modern Instance 1881 #booksky #capitalism #marriage #divorce #gildedage #greed #reputation #realism

“The thoughtless man, even if he can recite a large portion (of the law), but is not a doer of it, has no share in the priesthood, but is like a cowherd counting the cows of others.” The Buddha Dhammapada 5th Century BCE #booksky #law #legality #hypocrisy #justice #buddhism #wisdom #twinverses

“No one else can betray you the way you can betray you. But for most people it’s a certainty—no one else will betray you the way you will betray you.” Shane McCrae Pulling the Chariot of the Sun: A Memoir of a Kidnapping #booksky

"I was a weaver of jagged words A warbler of garbled tunes A singer of savage songs I was bitter Yes Bitter and sorely sad For when I wrote I dipped my pen In the crazy heart Of mad America." Frank Marshall Davis I Am the American Negro 1937 #booksky #freedomofthepress #blackhistory #poetry

“If cultural imperialism is a threat to national cultural identity, it must be a threat to the experience of belonging.” John Tomlinson Cultural Imperialism 1991 #booksky #culture #imperialism #empire #capitalism #economy #media #globalization

“It had come about exactly in the way things happen in books.” Agatha Christie And Then There Were None 1939 I don’t know about you, but it has been feeling like 1939 for ten years. #books #literacy #mystery #resistance #reading