“… But the sight of Mr. Knightley among the most attentive, soon drew away half Emma’s mind; and she fell into a train of thinking on the subject of Mrs. Weston’s suspicions, to which the sweet sounds of the united voices gave only momentary interruptions. Her objections to Mr. Knightley’s marrying did not in the least subside. She could see nothing but evil in it.”
“… Emma’s eyes were instantly withdrawn; and she sat silently meditating, in a fixed attitude, for a few minutes. A few minutes were sufficient for making her acquainted with her own heart. A mind like hers, once opening to suspicion, made rapid progress. She touched - she admitted - she acknowledged the whole truth. Why was it so much worse that Harriet should be in love with Mr. Knightley, than with Frank Churchill? Why was the evil so dreadfully increased by Harriet’s having some hope of a return? It darted through her, with the speed of an arrow, that Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself! ”
“… She saw that there never had been a time when she did not consider Mr. Knightley as infinitely the superior, or when his regard for her had not been infinitely the most dear. She saw, that in persuading herself, in fancying, in acting to the contrary, she had been entirely under a delusion, totally ignorant of her own heart. ”
─ Emma, Jane Austen
Atonement (2007) dir. Joe Wright // Lonely by Natalie Wee // “Holding hands” by Daniel Arsham, 2015 // Taking the Hands by Robert Bly // Pride and Prejudice (2005) dir. Joe Wright // Your Hands by Florence Ripley Mastin // Anna Karenina (2012) dir. Joe Wright // No Children by The Mountain Goats // Emma (2020) dir. Autumn de Wilde
‘so maybe i wanted to give you something more than a catalog of non-definitive acts, something other than the desperation’
‘take a body, maybe / your own, dump it gently. all your dead / unfinished selves and dump them gently’
‘i think i’d rather keep the bullet this time. it’s mine, you can’t have it, see, im not giving it up’
‘when you bang your head on the wall you have to remember / you’re on both sides of it already but go ahead, / yell at yourself’
‘a man takes his sadness down the river and throws it in the river but then he’s still left with the river’
‘tonight you’re thinking of cities under crowns / of snow and im staring at you like ‘im looking through the window, counting birds’
‘i had to make up all the words myself. the way / they taste, the way they sound in the air’
‘please keep him safe. / let him lay his head on my chest and we will be / like sailors, swimming in the sound of / it, dashed / to pieces’
‘i’ll be your slaughterhouse, your killing floor, your morgue and final resting, walking around with this bullet inside me’
‘i ran and i knew you wouldn’t catch me. / you are a fever i am learning to live with, and everything is happening at the wrong end of a very long tunnel’
‘i clawed my way into the light but the light is just as scary. id rather quit. id rather be sad. it’s too much work.’
‘someone once told me that explaining is an admission of failure. im sure you remember, i was on the phone with you, sweetheart’
‘and the tug of a simple / profound sadness when it sounds so far away’
‘here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed’
“Personally, I’m a mess of conflicting impulses—I’m independent and greedy and I also want to belong and share and be a part of the whole. I doubt that I’m the only one who feels this way. It’s the core of monster making, actually. Wanna make a monster? Take the parts of yourself that make you uncomfortable—your weaknesses, bad thoughts, vanities, and hungers—and pretend they’re across the room. It’s too ugly to be human. It’s too ugly to be you. Children are afraid of the dark because they have nothing real to work with. Adults are afraid of themselves.
Oh we’re a mess, poor humans, poor flesh—hybrids of angels and animals, dolls with diamonds stuffed inside them. We’ve been to the moon and we’re still fighting over Jerusalem. Let me tell you what I do know: I am more than one thing, and not all of those things are good. The truth is complicated. It’s two-toned, multi-vocal, bittersweet. I used to think that if I dug deep enough to discover something sad and ugly, I’d know it was something true. Now I’m trying to dig deeper.”
