#eleanor catton

[quotespile]

Dawn is such a private hour, don’t you think? Such a solitary hour. One always hears that said of midnight, but I think of midnight as remarkably companionable — everyone together, sleeping in the dark.

Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

[litsnaps]

[alefarben]

Dawn is such a private hour, don’t you think? Such a solitary hour. One always hears that said of midnight, but I think of midnight as remarkably companionable; everyone together, sleeping in the dark.

Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

[cowboysucker]

This film makes me curl up on the ground foaming at the mouth and violently shake like a rabid animal I love it so much omg

(Boo tumblr for making it blurry???)

[metaphrasis]

“When she made things grow, she experienced a kind of manifest forgiveness, an abiding moving-on and making-new that she found impossible in almost every other sphere of life. Even in her failures and mistakes—as when she learned that onion seeds don’t tend to keep, or that low soil temperatures result in carrots that are pale, or that fennel inhibits growth in other plants and should be propagated only on its own—she never felt chastised, for truth, in a garden, did not take the form of rectitude, and right was not the opposite of wrong. To learn even something as simple as to water the roots of a plant rather than its leaves was not to be dealt the harsh reality of cold hard fact, but rather to be let into a secret. In a garden, expertise was personal and anecdotal—it was allegorical—it was ancient—it had been handed down; one felt that gardeners across the generations were united in a kind of guild, and that every counsel had the quality of wisdom, gentle, patient, and holistic—and yet unwavering, for there was no quarrelling with the laws and tendencies of nature, no room for judgment, no dispute: the proof lay only in the plants themselves, and in the soil, and in the air, and in the harvest.”

— Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

[strokeofserenity]

“It is a feature of human nature to give what we most wish to receive.”

Eleanor Catton

[poetlcs]

books read in 2025 - no. 1

birnam wood by eleanor catton

[addictivecontradiction]

Emma., 2020

[derangedrhythms]

[…] as if the act of self-regarding was not as subtle, fraught and ever-changing as any bond between twin souls. 

Eleanor Catton, from ‘The Luminaries’

[quotespile]

Democracy isn’t about everyone voting the exact same way, it’s about whether you agree to go along with the outcome of the vote even if it turns out you’re in the minority. That’s consensus.

Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood

[litsnaps]

[bookcoversonly]

Title: The Rehearsal | Author: Eleanor Catton | Publisher: Granta (2009)

[quotessentially]

From Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries

[vfdinthewild]

"...but also because its defeat ranked among the very few decisive victories for protest action in his lifetime..."

-from Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, ch. 2.

[judgingbooksbycovers]

The Luminaries

By Eleanor Catton.