
The Secret History

of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty? Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another? Because, I mean—mending old things, preserving them, looking after them—on some level there’s no rational grounds for it—”
Donna Tartt • The Goldfinch: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

Thinking of what lies beyond these stone walls makes me want to rip off this dress, and escape this castle. I want to tear through the untamed grass and feel the wild dandelions between my toes. I want to smell the pine trees, and hear the wind howling through the mountains.
Lauren Palphreyman • The Wolf King: A Fantasy Romance
Only Arturo Caminada wept. Openly. Manly. For forty years he had served you as driver, handyman, man's man, as lover long ago for Gala, the wife you loved beyond the distance of touch or desire. For forty years he answered your call only to be omitted from the will so cleverly written to confuse and cretinize. A surrealist gesture.