Well, hello there! This is a special birthday edition, whoop whoooop. My friend Ben, being awesome, gave me a book of--well, perhaps you should read the title, there. He also gave me (whilst continually being awesome) the newest rendition of Dorian Gray, the one starring the most beautiful human being on the face of this plane--ehh, Benjamin Barnes. Go on, Google him right now. Do yourself a favor! When I opened them I was all "How did you know!?" Which in retrospect is a stupid question. Guys, if there's one thing I am all about, it's Oscar Wilde, almost bordering on obsession... Just kidding, I think I've passed that boundary already. If I ever met him, I'd be to him what that creepy fat guy in Space Jam was to Michael Jordan... Well, a little less so. I don't think anyone can really be that creepy. Please don't kill me with dilophosaurs.
Anyway, there's not going to be a lot of insight because these are just some awesome things Oscar Wilde said. But I figured you deserved to bask in his awesomeness too because, uh, it's Oscar Wilde. Also, I can't remember if you (Emma) have actually ever read anything by him. I feel like you must of, or at least absorbed things through osmosis, but whatever. Let's go, shall we?
"Life is much too important a thing to ever talk seriously about it (1)." This was a given, though I have to admit I like the misquoted version better, this is very awkwardly worded. OSCAR. Gosh.
"The Book of Life begins with a man and woman in a garden. It ends with Revelations" (1). I feel like there's a sex joke in here. I mean... He would. He really would...
"One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead" (1).
"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all" (1). Although this (upcoming) quote of Wilde's is nowhere in this book, I feel like these two go hand-in-hand: "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
"To become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life" (1).
"Life is never fair... And perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not" (2). Okay, so Emma. Why haven't you read Catch-22 yet? There's this great scene where the men are talking about their pasts, and their fathers and stuff... Like, one guy is talking about how he's rich and good things are just thrown at him for no apparent reason, which leads him to conclude that the riches must actually be someone else's, and another fellow pipes up and says, you know, perhaps it was my father's. He worked hard his whole life and only suffered from misfortune. And there are few other examples of oh, this is mine--but maybe it was meant to be for you, and vice versa. And then one guy says: "Just for once I'd like to see all these things sort of straightened out, with each person getting exactly what he deserves. It might give me some confidence in the universe." (Via Wikiquote.) So... Yeah. Also, fun fact about that quote: I wrote that on a dollar and Alyssa got it and refused to spend it, to the best of my knowledge, to this day. She kept it affixed to the front of her daily planner for the remainder of the school year. It was kind of touching. ....I miss Alyssa...
"One can live for years sometimes without living at all, and then all life comes crowding into one single hour" (2).
"I love acting. It is so much more real than life" (2).
"One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar" (3).
"The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast" (3).
"I wrote when I did not know life; now that I do know the meaning of life, I have no more to write. Life cannot be written; life can only be lived" (4). PS. Oscar, I love you.
"We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell' (5).
"In Paris one can lose one's time most delightfully; but one can never lose one's way" (5). I can attest to this one. Actually, this probably applies best (in my experience) to strolling in Cimitiere du Pere Lachaise... Which is sort of funny (for lack of a better word) because *someone* is buried there... No, but actually, it's a very nice place in its own right; the surrounding area is pretty lovely too.
"But the past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are" (5).
"Women are meant to be loved, not understood" (5).
"She'll never love you unless you are always at her heels; women like to be bothered" (6).
"The one charm of the past is that it is past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen" (8).
"There is one thing infinitely more pathetic than to have lost the woman one is in love with, and that is to have won her and found out how shallow she is" (9). I want to know when Oscar said this one, for obvious reasons.
"As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied"(11). Noooot a big fan of Mrs Vane.
"There is only one real tragedy in a woman's life. The fact that the past is always her lover, and her future invariably her husband" (11).
"I sometimes think that God in creating man, somewhat overestimated His ability" (12). I do not like the existence of that comma at all.
"What a man really has, is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance" (12).
"Man, poor, awkward, reliable, necessary man belongs to a sex that has been rational for millions and millions of years. He can't help himself. It is in his race. The History of Woman is very different. We have always been picturesque protests against the mere existence of common sense. We saw its dangers from the first" (13).
"When a man is old enough to do wrong he should be old enough to do right also" (13).
"Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable" (14).
"People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that is is impossible to count them accurately" (14). Goddammit Oscar, those commas.
"One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing" (14).
"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious" (14).
"I like men who have a future and women who have a past" (14).
"Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications" (15).
"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing" (15).
"I like persons better than principles and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world" (15).
"It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true" (16).
"People who want to say merely what is sensible should say it to themselves before they come down to breakfast in the morning, never after" (16). I find this funny in comparison to Lewis Carrol and his practice of believing in "six impossible things before breakfast".
"Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes" (16).
"The worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic" (16). Good news, Oscar--love you some more.
"What a silly thing love is! It is not half as useful as logic, for it does not prove anything and it is always telling one things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true" (17).
"To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance" (17).
"...Love and gluttony justify everything" (17).
"Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the poor" (17).
"Men always want to be a women's first love. That is their clumsy vanity. Women have a more subtle instinct about things: What they like is to be a man's last romance" (17).
"Any place you love is the world to you" (18).
"...But love is not fashionable any more, the poets have killed it. They wrote so much about it that nobody believed them, and I am not surprised. True love suffers, and is silent" (18). This and the above quote are actually all smushed together, but I really think that's an odd combination. I can see why they'd do it, aesthetically at least, but I just don't feel it, you know? Also, I wish there was an underline option so you could see my favourite part of the second quote, but Emma, you who apparently actually does absorb Oscar Wilde by osmosis from me, should remember, because I'm certain you commit everything I say to your memory (or at least your twitter account) because I am that awesome.
"One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry" (18).
"Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring" (18). I wish blogger allowed html hearts, by the way.
"Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word too. The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer" (19). I just want to point out that this is from Dorian Gray, which means Wilde had been married for at least five years when he wrote it (with the estimation that it was written a year before Lippincott's actually published it). Juuuuust saying. (Bosie makes them good boys go bad!)
"Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious; both are disappointed" (19). Again, I feel like this was a Mrs Vane line.
"Once a week is quite enough to propose to anyone, and it should always be done in a manner that attracts some attention" (20).
"I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable" (20).
"...In married life three is company and two is none" (20).
"The proper basis for marriage is mutual misunderstanding" (21).
"When a woman finds out about her husband she either becomes dreadfully dowdy, or wears very smart bonnets that some other woman's husband has to pay for" (22).
"There's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about" (22).
"After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations" (23).
"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one" (23). Really, Dorian? Because I hear you're more into brutally murdering friends. I don't know, just heard that somewhere. Whatever.
"Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship" (23).
"Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend's success" (23).
"Relations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die" (24).
"To lose one parent... may be regarded as misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness" (24).
"I fare say that if I knew him I should not be his friend at all. It is a very dangerous thing to know one's friends" (24). Ayuuuup.
"I shall never make a new friend in my life, though perhaps a few after I die" (25).
"To get back to one's youth, one has merely to repeat one's follies" (25).
"Youth is the one thing worth having" (26).
"To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up" (27).
"...Duty is what one expects from others, it is not what one does oneself" (27). Guess what? Love this guy.
"He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone" (27). There's a quote I have in one of my many other quote books that is something akin to: "She would toss her friends in a river just for the pleasure of fishing them out". Also, guess what I'm going to say again.
"The first duty of life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has yet discovered" (28).
"One should always be a little improbable" (28).
"Everyone should keep someone else's diary" (29).
"Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest of motives" (29).
"A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal" (29).
"There is a fatality about good resolutions--they are always made too late" (29).
"One should always play fairly--when one has the winning cards" (29).
"I rely on you to misrepresent me" (29).
"A good reputation is one of the many annoyances to which I have never been subjected" (30). I really, really, really like this one. You know how in my Junky post I complained about the praise of the bedside manner quote? This is a quote like this, except it didn't automatically click like that one did. At first I was kind of like wait, what? But then I started thinking about it, and I mean, if you're high class and you... I don't know, get caught having an affair or peddling drugs or hooking up with male prostitutes, people are going to be shocked. If you're seen as a vagabond or bum, people are just going to be like "Oh, there's that vagabum again, sleeping around and doing heroin", and... Now we've made it back to William S Burroughs...?
"It is not good for one's morals to see bad acting" (31).
"Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes" (31).
"Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime" (32).
"I can resist everything except temptation" (32).
"Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed" (32).
"...There are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to" (32).
"The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it" (33).
"The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future" (33).
"There is no sin except stupidity" (33).
"If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out" (33).
"It is the confession, not the priest that gives us absolution" (34).
"It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth" (34).
"Geniuses... are always talking about themselves, when I want them to be thinking about me" (34).
"The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius" (34).
"I like looking at geniuses, and listening to beautiful people" (34).
"I know so many men in London whose only talent is washing. I suppose that is why men of genius so seldom wash; they are afraid of being mistaken for men of talent only!" (35).
"The worst thing you can do for a person of genius is to help him: that way lies his destruction. I have had many devoted helpers--and you see the result" (34). I'm curious about the date of when he said this.
"I think it is better to be beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand no one is more ready than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly" (34).
"Good looks are a snare that every sensible man would like to be caught in" (34).
"If you think of anything, you kill it. Nothing survives being thought of" (36).
"The value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it" (36).
"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative" (36).
"All art is quite useless" (37).
"To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim" (38).
"No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did he would cease to be an artist" (38).
"It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors" (38).
"A truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any conditions other than those he has selected" (38).
"The Artist is the creator of beautiful things" (38). This is from the preface of The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I think shines a new, interesting light on the book. An ironic light too, since Dorian is clearly so ugly internally... And that ugly persona was partially ushered in by the artist, though it was created by Wotton, technically... And then of course the painting degenerates and becomes an ugly piece of work--but it was beautiful at one point... So the painting progresses as normal life progresses, and Basil Halward just played God, a lot more successfully than most. Then that works into his maxim, "Life imitates art" which makes sense, considering the story... Bam. (And, if you're wondering about the "new, interesting light" when it is from the preface, it is because in the infinite wisdom of Barnes & Noble publishers, they chose not to include it in that actual book--instead, it is randomly inserted into The Collected Oscar Wilde. It also deletes a fake letter by Basil altogether--it is not necessary to the story, but it is a little agitating. I could go on by the disappointment the Barnes & Noble edition leaves in me in comparison to my 1910 copy, but it's really rather pedantic. The one advantage that version may have, which I'd need to check up on, is if it includes the deleted passages that more likely than not would have remained deleted in the 1910 version.)
"I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train" (38).
"Only mediocrities progress" (39).
"M Zola is determined to show that, if he has not got genius, he can at least be dull" (39). Loooove.
"Only the great masters of style ever succeed in being obscure" (39).
"Whistler is indeed one of the very greatest masters of painting in my opinion. And I may add that in this opinion Mr Whistler himself entirely concurs (40).
"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all" (40). He says the same thing about poetry elsewhere. I want to say it is in 'Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young', though you should not quote me on that.
"There are no real emotions left--only extraordinary adjectives" (40).
"The books that the world calls immoral books are books that show the world its own shame" (40). Good news, you're kind of the best.
"Mr James Payn is an adept in the art of concealing what is not worth finding" (41).
"I have no desire to be a popular novelist. It is far too easy" (41).
"--Can be read without any trouble and was probably written without any trouble also!" (41). This was from a review, though no clue is given to what book what just ripped to shreds.
"...A form of poetry which cannot possibly hurt anybody, even if translated into French" (41). Again, a review, but of what work exactly, who knows?
"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all" (42).
"The aim of most of our modern novelists seems to be, not to write good novels, but to write novels that will do good" (42). I can't decide if he's being harshly critical or not.
"A poet can survive everything but a misprint" (42).
"Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. The nineteenth century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac" (42). Though I don't know who Balzac is, that doesn't make me dig this one any less.
"After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one's tears" (43). / "How curiously it had all been revealed to me! A book of Sonnets, published nearly three hundred years ago, written by a dead hand and in honour of a dead youth, had suddenly explained to me the whole story of my soul's romance... Strange, that we knew so little about ourselves, and that our most intimate personality was concealed from us!'" (
'The Portrait of Mr WH'). One: Again, you can guess my response. And also, if I may quote (for my feelings on it haven't changed in the slightest; try not to hate me for quoting myself) the
last time I quoted this passage: "It's just... so lovely. This a fantastic passage, including that what the ellipses have hidden. But it was very touching, something about it touches me, it breaks my heart and makes me love it all the more fervently at the same time."
"It is exactly because a man cannot do a thing that he is the proper judge of it" (43). This is another 'bedside manner' quote. It sounds absurd at first, but it makes sense once you think about a little, no? Someone who has talent in the area is bound to have his own biases and ideas about the subject and how it should carry out. The only way to get a pure judgment is to get someone with a tabula rasa on the subject at hand.
"I never reply to my critics. I have far too much time. But I think some day I will give a general answer in the form of a lecture, which I shall call 'Straight Talks to Old Men'" (44).
"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about" (44).
"I may have said the same thing before... But my explanation, I am sure, will always be different" (44).
"Murder is always a mistake... One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner" (44). Oh, Oscar, you silly goose, you!
"A man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument is a thoroughly unreasonable person" (44).
"I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing" (44).
"I like to do all the talking myself. It saves time and prevents arguments" (45).
"Lots of people act well but very few people talk well, which shows that talking is much more the difficult thing of the two, and much the finer thing also" (45).
"I like talking to a brick wall, it's the only thing in the world that never contradicts me" (45). Where's that html heart at?
"I hate when people talk about themselves, as you do, when one wants to talk about oneself, as I do" (45).
"Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it" (46).
"Oh, I'm so glad you've come. There are a hundred things I want not to say to you" (46). This definitely sounds like it may have lived on as a Groucho Marx quip.
"The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves" (46).
"I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never any use to oneself" (46).
"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught" (47). If I was valedictorian, this is all my speech would be, I can promise you that. And then I would just walk off, while putting on my Ray-Bans, and the sun would glint off them all cool-like... I also kind of regret not making this my year book quote, as I do "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" (strangely enough, not in here), but Jack Kerouac and Carl Sagan--can you really regret either of them? Answer: No, unless if you're super lame.
"When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong" (47).
"People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depths of generosity" (48). "What they need" in this case is advice.
"The mind of a thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value" (48). Fun fact, this quote made it here mainly because I find the "all monsters and dust" bit strangely adorable. Also: Good description of Leopold Bloom (because he's the sort of fellow who is well-rounded, but the people in the bar--damned if I can remember exactly who, but I'll pretend it was the Citizen--are like ugh what an egotistical jerk, he acts like he knows everything, never shuts up, always has to throw some random fact in blah blah blahhh). Anyone who would be "well-informed" too, but I thought of Leopold Bloom first. There is a flower that bloometh (in my mind).
"Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything, and when they get older they know it" (48). / "A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of"--Jane Austen
"I don't want money. It is only people who pay their bills who want that, and I never pay mine" (49).
"It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating" (49).
"There is only one class in the community that thinks about money more than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else" (49).
"Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less" (49).
"As for begging it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg" (49).
"I am never in during the afternoon, except when I am confined to the house by a sharp attack of penury" (49). The important note for this is that it was in a letter from 1898--that is, after the scandal and the release.
"Society often forgives the crminal; it never forgives the dreamer" (50).
"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious" (50). And when used in an argument, it's a logical fallacy!
"Journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read" (51).
"As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar it will cease to be popular" (51).
"The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it" (52).
"We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language" (52).
"Somehow I don't think I shall live to see the new century--if another century began and I was still alive, it would really be more than the English could stand" (53). I can't help but be curious about the date of when he said this. Of course, it came back to bite him as he did not actually--well, he survived into the new century, but only eleven months--exactly eleven months; he died on the thirtieth.
"It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances" (53).
"One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art" (53).
"He has nothing, but looks everything. What more can one desire?" (54).
"I have made an important discovery... that alcohol, taken in sufficient qualities, produces all the effects of intoxication" (54). Hehehehe.
Regarding his brother's fondness for the drink: "Oh, he occasionally takes an alcoholiday" (55).
"There are many things that we would throw away, if we were not afraid that others might pick them up" (55). Amen to that, brother.
"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live" (55).
"Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others. Health is the primary duty of life" (55).
"An inordinate passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young" (55).
"I adore simple pleasures, they are the last refuge of the complex" (55).
"It is better to take pleasure in a rose than to put its root under a microscope" (55).
"Work is the curse of the drinking class" (55).
"It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done" (55).
"A mask tells us more than a face" (56).
"Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt" (56). Okay. This is definitely probably my most favourite thing that Wilde has said. The context given for it is less than desirable, it completely glosses over the context I gave it (see link) with an elipses. But, that doesn't change the fact that I love this. If I could just hang out with Oscar Wilde and CS Lewis I'd be a pretty happy person.
"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again" (56). I feel like Fabrizzles alluded to this quote or joked about something similar when we learned about poetry (and subsequently were making fun of poetry) in Creative Writing.
"Cultivated leisure is the aim of man" (56).
"One could never pay too high a price for any sensation" (56). Oh Dorian, you and your opium and sex orgies and jam!
"If there was less sympathy in the world there would be less trouble in the world" (57).
"I am afraid I play no outdoor games at all, except dominoes... I have sometimes played dominoes outside French cafes" (57). High five!
"Moods don't last. It is their chief charm" (57).
"It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure" (58). I'm pretty sure it's Dorian that says this (which would make sense, as it sounds like something he'd say after he tells Sybil it's over) and for all his being a terrible person--I kind of dig this one. (I can't deny that Dorian acted like a jerk, though, and should have handled the situation at least 90,000 times better than he did...)
"A woman's life revolves in curves of emotion" (58).
"...A sentimentalist is someone who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it" (58). In one of his other essays (this is from "Conversation")--possibly from 'The Portrait of Mr WH' even--he talks about how reading about love or hearing ballads or what have you make you desire love, or love love, and imagine it suddenly exists, while it picks an object of affection later. (The same with sadness, or any other intense emotion.) So... Yeah. Paying for it in this sense means without being rended emotionally, not actually using money. Also, is rended actually a word?
"Punctuality is the thief of time--I am not punctual myself, but I do like punctuality in others" (58).
"I have the simplest tastes... I am always satisfied with the best" (Back cover).
Yaaay! There you have it, many, many examples of Oscar Wilde being a fantastic human being. I realize I haven't cited where all these quotes came from but guess what? It's going to be a game for you, like Where's Waldo?, except... Well, Where's Waldo? is pretty awesome, actually. But yeah, maybe this will inspire you, EMMA, who is receiving an inordinate amount of textual abuse from me in this post for some reason. But come on. I finally dared face Charles Dickens--a thousand pages worth of Charles Dickens--so I figure you can do this, which will be infinitely more enjoyable. (And that's how I ended up in the Thunderdome, fighting Charles Dickens.) All I'm saying: the most came from The Picture of Dorian Gray, the best tend to come from The Soul of Man Under Socialism, and in general, the most well-known and most oft-quoted lines come ironically enough from what is arguably Oscar Wilde's most poorly-received and unknown play--Vera, or the Nihilists. (No, I haven't read it.) So yeah, hit this up. Not like I can't lend you 85% of his works... Or multiple copies of any of those works... Or you can continue to enjoy osmosis. I think I just like having excuses to write osmosis.
MLA Citation information: Wilde, Oscar. Oscar Wilde's Wit and Wisdom: A Book of Quotations. Dover Publications: United States, 1998.
Also, Hermione Danger's cat is named Crookshanked. And speaking of cats? "Oh, so it's my job to train the cats to rollerskate? What have you got to do that's so important?"--Emma. I can't wait till I forget the context of that text message and look back on that and don't even question it.
And what else? I've yet to watch Dorian Gray, but that will happen before the weekend is done. I'll be sure to post something about it, even if that post is just "ZOMG BEN BARNES COME AND RAVISH ME!" because really, if you're expecting anything more than that you are a fool, my good... audience. (Oh my God, more than one person is going to be reading this post. This is really, really weird.) Go ahead,
judge me, if you dare. Actually, the question is probably what will I find sexier, Ben Barnes dressed up (oh that Victorian era fetish of mine) or him nude. Taking bets now! Also, while I'm talking about Ben Barnes and Colin Firth: Colin Firth's beard is funnier than the eighties. Seriously.
This post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma: Well you know November has come when it's gone away
(PS. Regarding the lyrics--it took me a good five minutes to think of a good set, so you should appreciate it. I mean, I've used the
obvious already, and then I was like "Oh, Magnolia by the Hush Sound would be perfect too!" Good news, brain. It happened.)
I did another one, but this certainly turned out better. I kind of like it smaller, too... (Please be kind about this, it's been a while since I've drawn a portrait--about five months, strangely enough, the last one was of Oscar Wilde... Well, that's not completely fair, five months since I've drawn a living person. In the beginning of the year I decided to do a serious portrait of Demos, however. I can't remember if I did Augustus too, though if I did I probably gave up halfway through. Love that boy, but he has such a weird face.) Oh, and the scene it is from is at Basil's funeral. Spoiler alert.
