The OG Valjean

Too much adorable is happening here

Les Miserables

“Let us say in passing, to be blind and to be loved, is in fact--on this earth where nothing is complete--one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness. To have continually at your side a woman, a girl, a sister, a charming being, who is there because you need her, and because she cannot do without you, to know you are indispensable to someone necessary to you, to be able at all times to measure her affection by the degree of the presence that she gives you, and to say to yourself: She dedicates all her time to me, because I possess her whole love; to see the thought if not the face; to be sure of the fidelity of one being in a total eclipse of the world; to imagine the rustling of her dress as the rustling of wings; to hear her moving to and fro, going out, coming in, talking, singing, to think that you are the cause of those steps, those words, that song; to show your personal attraction at every moment; to feel even more powerful as your infirmity increases; to become in darkness, and by reason of darkness, the star around which this angel gravitates; few joys can equal that. The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves--say rather, loved in spite of ourselves; the conviction the blind have. In their calamity, to be served is to be caressed. Are they deprived of anything? No. Light is not lost where love enters. And what a love! A love wholly founded in purity. There is no blindness where there is certainty.” 

YES

Leviathan

"This is the black sea-brute bulling through wave-wrack,

Ancient as ocean’s shifting hills, who in sea-toils
Travelling, who furrowing the salt acres
Heavily, his wake hoary behind him,
Shoulders spouting, the fist of his forehead
Over wastes gray-green crashing, among horses unbroken
From bellowing fields, past bone-wreck of vessels,
Tide-ruin, wash of lost bodies bobbing
No longer sought for, and islands of ice gleaming
Who ravening the rank flood, wave-marshalling,
Overmastering the dark sea-marches, finds home
And harvest. Frightening to foolhardiest
Mariners, his size were difficult to describe:
The hulk of him is like hills heaving,
Dark, yet as crags of drift-ice, crowns cracking in thunder,
Like land’s self by night black-looming, surf churning and trailing
Along his shores’ rushing, shoal-water boding
About the dark of his jaws; and who should moor at his edge
And far on afoot would find gates of no gardens,
But the hill of dark underfoot diving,
Closing overhead, the cold deep, and drowning.
He is called Leviathan, and named for rolling,
First created he was of all creatures,
He has held Jonah three days and nights,
He is that curling serpent that in ocean is,
Sea-fright he is, and the shadow under the earth.
Days there are, nonetheless, when he lies
Like an angel, although a lost angel
On the waste’s unease, no eye of man moving
Bird hovering, fish flashing, creature whatever
Who after him came to herit earth’s emptiness
Froth at flanks seething soothes to stillness,
Waits; with one eye he watches
Dark of night sinking last, with one eye dayrise
As at first over foaming pastures. He makes no cry
Though that light is a breath. The sea curling,
Star-climbed, wind-combed, cumbered with itself still
As at first it was, is the hand not yet contented
Of the Creator. And he waits for the world to begin."

-W.S. Merwin

'Shakespeare Uncovered': PBS Brings Author's Work To Life With Jeremy Irons' Help

The bottom line on the Bard, according to Irons: Shakespeare endures as the greatest dramatist of all because he chronicled the eternal human condition in all its joys and sorrows.

"When we see those plays now, they still speak to us with a resonance that many hundreds of plays written between Shakespeare's time and today don't," he said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/25/shakespeare-uncovered-pbs_n_2552060.html

Jane

“I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you. You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you–and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.” -C. Bronte

“I would always rather be happy than dignified.”

“Jane, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you don't know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it is not because she is mad I hate her. If you were mad, do you think I should hate you?"

"I do indeed, sir."

"Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still: if you raved, my arms should confine you, and not a strait waistcoat--your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me: if you flew at me as wildly as that woman did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace, at least as fond as it would be restrictive. I should not shrink from you with disgust as I did from her: in your quiet moments you should have no watcher and no nurse but me; and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return; and never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer a ray of recognition for me.” -Charlotte Bronte 

Once there was a king named Acrisius, he had a beautiful daughter named Danae...

Perseus

Sing me to sleep

Miranda Kuykendall

Baroque Inspired Photography at its Finest

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/helen-sobiralski-fashion-photography

Dracula musical

"It's getting kind of hard to believe
things are going to get better
I've been drowning too long to believe
that the tide's going to turn

And I've been living too hard to believe
that things are going to get easier now
I'm still trying to shake off the pain
from the lessons I've learned

And if I see Van Helsing, I swear
to the Lord I will slay him!
A-ha-ha-haa! Take it from me
I swear I will let it be so! A-ha-ha-haa!!

Blood will run down his face
when he is decapitated...aah!
his head on my mantle is how
I will let this world know:

How much I love you--
die...die...die!
(Pause)
I can't."
-Jason Segal

Salome

"Ah! I have kissed thy mouth, Jokanaan, I have kissed thy mouth.  There was a bitter taste on thy lips.  Was it the taste of blood...? But perchance it is the taste of love...They say that love has a bitter taste..." -Oscar Wilde

Gold

                                         http://www.openculture.com/2012/05/rare_1959_audio_flannery_oconnor_reads_a_good_man_is_hard_to_find.html

"Let me spend my skin on you."

Greats

“There's no use going to school unless your final destination is the library.”

“I still love books. Nothing a computer can do can compare to a book. You can't really put a book on the Internet. Three companies have offered to put books by me on the Net, and I said, 'If you can make something that has a nice jacket, nice paper with that nice smell, then we'll talk.' All the computer can give you is a manuscript. People don't want to read manuscripts. They want to read books. Books smell good. They look good. You can press it to your bosom. You can carry it in your pocket...

The books are to remind us what asses and fool we are. They're Caesar's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, 'Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.' Most of us can't rush around, talking to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.” -Ray Bradbury

Bradbury

“Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them.” 

“Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”

“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 dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.” - Ray Bradbury

Wharton

“The feeling he had nourished and given prominence to was one of thankfulness for his escape: he was like a traveller so grateful for rescue from a dangerous accident that at first he is hardly conscious of his bruises. Now he suddenly felt the latent ache and realized that after all he had not come off unhurt.” 

"I think the power of your writing is that you communicate with yourself, not with your reader."

I'm so obsessed with this kid.

Garbo

"I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your body."

-Neruda

"O, I am fortune's fool."

"Alive, in triumph! and Mercutio slain! 

Away to heaven, respective lenity, 

And fire-eyed fury be my conduct now! 

Now, Tybalt, take the "villain" back again, 

That late thou gavest me; for Mercutio's soul 

Is but a little way above our heads, 

Staying for thine to keep him company: 

Either thou, or I, or both, must go with him."

“These violent delights have violent ends"

                               

“O, here

Will I set up my everlasting rest,

And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars

From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!

Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you

The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss

A dateless bargain to engrossing death!” 

-Romeo and Juliet

W.H.

V.H.

“He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.” 

"Those who do not weep, do not see."

-Victor Hugo

Rebecca

Fall

In sorrow

“In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.” -Tolkien

“A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.”

Tolkien

Such a brave and beautiful young man. I am in tears.

"There are too many moments in which we are unbreakable."

It's a wonder that this body doesn't break

"The moon's gonna rise no matter what...
There's a house on fire and I'm running inWith an empty box of matches...
The way the parts of meThey always disagreeIt's a wonder that this body doesn't break
The moon's gonna rise no matter whatYeah, the moon's gonna rise no matter whatAnd I'm a hero and a monster, so tie me to the chairBecause the moon's gonna rise no matter what
The way the parts of meThey always disagreeIt's a wonder that this body doesn't break." 

Streetcar

"Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose,

Flushing his brow, and in his pained heart

Made purple riot." 

-Keats

Polanski's "Repulsion"

Dear God, Laurence.

A Royal Affair

Watching Olivier in "Rebecca" is like never seeing him before

"Promise me never to wear black satin and pearls."

"The music, yearning like a God in pain." -Keats

This sort of suffering

"Is there another life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must be, we cannot be created for this sort of suffering." -Keats

The most beautiful thing I've seen all day.

"Someday, we will fall down and weep. And understand it all...all things." -Tree of Life

"I remembered you the moment I met you."

My Love, an admittedly passive-agressive post

What's immeasurably interesting and ultimately heartbreaking is the reason we ended, since we have ended-- despite your posturing-- has, one by girlish one, crept back into your life.  I've watched it with burning eyes. The saddest part being you don't even realize or recognize their searing presence.  They were too many and too often for you to keep track.  However, for me, they are branded into the back of my mind with an white-hot iron and I'd do anything to extricate them.  I'd do anything to remove them.

Amidst your contrition, I am disgusted.

Despite the near daily pain of seeing your selfishness enacted, I should give thanks where it is due.  Thank you: for fortifying my wall of standards, for evolving me past my restrictions, for opening my eyes to insolence in ways previously uncharted, for giving me cause to seek other passions.

A foundation built on deceit and betrayal, however long it is hidden, can in the end amount to nothing.

"Nothing.
My word for him is nothing.
Let him be nothing.
Give him nothing.
Let him touch nothing of yours."
-Oedipus the King

"You'll never sink when you are with me-- Oh, Lord, I'm your Dead Sea."

"I was born to be your dead sea."
-The Lumineers

"Can I dance with you?"

The Road of Lost Innocence

"I don't feel like I can change the world. I don't even try. I only want to change this small life that I see standing in front of me, which is suffering. I want to change this small real thing that is the destiny of one little girl. And then another, and another, because if I didn't, I wouldn't be able to live with myself or sleep at night."  -Somaly Mam, former sex salve; now a human rights activist and mother of over 4,000 rescued sex trafficking victims.

“Oh, what a love it was, utterly free, unique, like nothing else on earth! Their thoughts were like other people's songs.”

-Boris Pasternak

Dr. Zhivago

“Don't be upset. Don't listen to me. I only meant that I am jealous of a dark, unconscious element, something irrational, unfathomable. I am jealous of your toilet articles, of the drops of sweat on your skin, of the germs in the air you breathe which could get into your blood and poison you. And I am jealous of Komarovsky, as if he were an infectious disease. Someday he will take you away, just as certainly as death will someday separate us. I know this must seem obscure and confused, but I can't say it more clearly. I love you madly, irrationally, infinitely.” 

“And why is it, thought Lara, that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?”

“About dreams. It is usually taken for granted that you dream of something that has made a particularly strong impression on you during the day, but it seems to me it´s just the contrary. Often it´s something you paid no attention to at the time -- a vague thought that you didn´t bother to think out to the end, words spoken without feeling and which passed unnoticed -- these are the things that return at night, clothed in flesh and blood, and they become the subjects of dreams, as if to make up for having been ignored during waking hours.” -Pasternak

Austen/Bronte

                               

 "I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.” 

Poe, "Berenice"

Looks like I've found the dress I'll be living/dying/afterlife-ing in.