This Is The Creature There Has Ever Been, or, the possibility of being
Ever since my life changed completely one windy night in 1988 in Hartford, CT— the first time I ever laid eyes, just in passing, on just a few moments of a season 2 episode of a CBS television show called Beauty and the Beast— it seemed that the entire world— all of reality— magically and permanently reshaped itself to contain and reflect the themes, the symbols and significance, and certainly the language, both spoken and not, of the series.
In fact, the longer I’ve lived, the more nearly every facet of the show has come to resonate for me and in me. One result has been that for a decade or more I’ve been collecting quotes that particularly spoke to me and which I initially intended to serve as potential epigrams in my sporadic BatB fan fiction, but which have since grown in such number that it has become clear they should have a home of their own here on my site in case they can serve as touchstones —and prompts!— for other fans of the show.
I need to say more (to put it mildly) about what this show has come to mean to me, and why, but since I haven’t yet decided in what form I’d like to attempt that, in the meantime I’m going to just start compiling a vast list here on the page at least temporarily designated for that purpose. It will quickly become too unwieldy to navigate easily so I’ll have to come up with some way to organize it, but til then, please feel free to browse and make use of any quote that speaks to you, whether as prompts for Beauty and the Beast fan fiction, or for any other Dream that marries your Above to your Below.
…pink and white tents of softness and nectar, which wafts and hangs everywhere – a sweetness so palpable and excessive that, before it, I’m struck, I’m taken, I’m conquered; I’m washed into it, as though it was a river…
Mary Oliver, Owls and Other Fantasies
This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year’s threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath…
Margaret Atwood, Shapechangers in Winter
There is nothing more confining than the prison we don’t know we are in.Whatever we are not conscious of can have a deep hold on us. We are in such a prison of our own making when we act as if the common world is not only the real world, but also the only world.
