Estrella's Journal

Rilke Quote

2008-03-05T04:30:00.000-08:00

O stars,
isn't it from you that the lover's desire for the face
of his beloved arises? Doesn't his secret insight
into her pure features come from the pure constellations?

From "The Third Elegy" by Rainer Maria Rilke (via The Amber Spyglass by Philip J. Pullman)

Stargirl Quotes

2008-03-03T06:32:00.000-08:00

As we approached each other, the noise and the students around us melted away and we were utterly alone, passing, smiling, holding each other's eyes, floors and walls gone, two people in a universe of space and stars. (pg 95)

One moment the moon was not there, and then it was, the one bright star. We walked across the desert, hand in hand, saying nothing. (pg 94)

"The earth is speaking to us, but we can't hear because of all the racket our senses are making. Sometimes we need to erase them, erase ou senses. Then--maybe--the eath will touch us. The univese will speak. The stars will whisper." (Stargirl speaking, pg 91)

from Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

Dave Matthews Band Quote: Pig

2007-11-18T03:00:00.000-08:00

Look, here are we
On this starry night, staring into space
And I must say
I feel as small as dust lying down here

From the song "Pig," off the Dave Matthews Band album Before These Crowded Streets

The Star by Liester on deviantArt

2007-11-15T04:16:00.000-08:00

The star by *Liester on deviant ART

An Observation on Gaiman's Stardust

2007-11-15T04:09:00.000-08:00

As noted, Stardust’s leading lady is Yvaine, a star in human form. who has fallen to Earth. The idea of a star in human form is not new. There is even a Marvel character, Cloud, a member of the Defenders in the 1980s, who was an entire nebula who took the form of a teenage girl (and sometimes a teenage boy) on Earth. I dealt with the concept in this column in my discussion of P.L. Travers’ first Mary Poppins book, in which one of the Pleiades appears as a young girl named Maia and even goes Christmas shopping in London (see “Comics in Context” #158).

What I found most intriguing about the Maia episode, and another one in which Mary Poppins hangs paper stars in the sky, is that they imply that in the world of Mary Poppins, science is wrong. Similarly, after meeting Yvaine, Tristran tells her “that he had always supposed stars to be, as Mrs. Cherry had taught them, flaming balls of burning gas many hundreds of miles across, just like the sun only further away” (p. 111). Mary Poppins and Stardust postulate that science is merely illusion, a notion that is appealing although not to be taken seriously. Science tells us that our planet is a miniscule part of a cosmos too vast for us to comprehend, to which we mean nothing. It is a bleak vision of reality. Wouldn’t the universe seem to be more benign if it had a more human scale, if the stars turned out to be people like ourselves, or to be tiny lights that we could reach out and touch just by climbing Mary Poppins’ ladder?

from Comics in Context at Kevin Smith's Quick Stop Entertainment, a website that reviews comics and related work
for the complete article, read Comics in Context #191: My Lucky Star

M is for Magic Quote: Troll Bridge

2007-10-02T03:18:00.000-07:00

'Trolls can smell the rainbows, trolls can smell the stars,' it whispered, sadly. 'Trolls can smell the dreams you dreamed before you were ever born. Come close to me and I'll eat your life.'

from the story "Troll Bridge" in M is for Magic, by Neil Gaiman

Oscar Wilde Quote

2006-12-29T11:29:00.001-08:00

We are all lying in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

from Oscar Wilde, unknown source

Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh

2006-12-29T11:22:00.000-08:00

Just about one of my favorite paintings.

Who is Estrella?

2006-12-29T07:56:00.000-08:00

Estrella is just one of my many names and means star in Spanish. This particular blog is a place for me to collect anything related to stars, in literature, art or other media. This is something I've done for years in a notebook, so I decided to publish it as a blog.

To check out my many other blogs, go to my main page, Understar Productions.