Laura
‰ЫПBut I will tell you something that I could breathe to no one else. She is not as much the meaning of my life as I thought. Separation has estranged us, or shown us the truth, or done some other shameful thing. I am so glad to have the word to breathe to you; I should not have liked to part without one. And now our parting is quite a success. I do not think my life has any meaning. And I find I do not want it to have any. I am one of those creatures who drag out a meaningless existence, and they are not so much to be pitied as people think.‰Ыќ
‰ЫПThank you very much for your letter. It has broken my heart, but that is the natural result of the use of words. When human speech developed, it was a foregone thing. It allowed people to communicate their thoughts, and what else could come of that? And putting them on paper renders it a certainty. People can keep on returning to them. ‰Ы_ You are wondering how I spend my time, which is kind of you, considering everything. I just wait for it to pass, and I find it is true that all things come to those who wait. Five weeks have gone beyond recall, which seems very nice and thorough. I cannot understand why people want to recall the hours. I could not bear to have my time back again.‰Ыќ
Not much of a work of detective fiction, but as the climax of the Harriet Vane storyline (which continued in a denouement with Busman's Honeymoon), it is excellent. The story sort of meanders around the actual problem, dealing variously with Harriet's infatuation with the possibility of escape into an academic life, with her problem with writing a novel that reveals her own feelings, with her interactions with Peter over the years since Have His Carcase, with life at a women's college in the 1930s, and with the problems of devoted love. The scene before Peter's last proposal, the sort of tying up of loose emotional ends, seemed awkward, too overly stated, but the simplicity (and hesitance) of the final proposal was good. A lot of literary allusions went right over my head. And yet this is one of the rare novels that I can open up at any spot and enjoy for a small piece, or (more likely) read a bit and then have to start at the beginning – or, better still, start again with Strong Poison and work my way onward.
‰ЫПAnyone looking at this whole scene in a mirror could well imagine that it was an old dream come true. When she was twenty, in her dreary little bedroom, she used to prepare mincemeat sandwiches and bottles of cheap red wine for Pierre, pretending that it was a choice supper with foie gras and old Burgundy. Now the foie gras was on the table, together with caviar canapes, and there was sherry and vodka in the bottles; now she had money, any number of connections, and a dawning reputation. And yet, she continued to feel herself on the fringe of society; this supper was only a counterfeit supper in a pseudo-elegant studio, and she was only a living caricature of the woman she pretended to be. ‰Ы_ The pretense used to be fun in the old days; it was the anticipation of a brilliant future. ... She knew that in no way would she ever reach the authentic ideal of which her present self was only a copy.‰Ыќ
—
‰ЫПPeople managed to surround themselves with an impervious world in which their lives had meaning, but there was always a little cheating at the bottom of it all. If you looked carefully, without trying to deceive yourself, you would find beneath all these imposing appearances nothing but a sprinkling of small, futile impressions .... it couldn‰ЫЄt be caught in words, it had to be borne in silence and then it disappeared without leaving any trace, and something else, equally elusive, took its place. Nothing but sand and water, and it was silly to try to build anything on it. Even death did not deserve all the fuss that was made over it. Of course it was terrifying, but only because you couldn‰ЫЄt imagine how you would feel.‰Ыќ
‰ЫПThe actors‰ЫЄ gestures said to their arms, to their robes: ‰ЫчBe majestic.‰ЫЄ But their insubmissive limbs allowed a biceps which knew nothing of the part they were playing to flaunt itself between shoulder and elbow; their bodies continued to express the trivialities of everyday life and to emphasize not the subtlety of Racine but the related functions of their muscles; and the hanging robes that they held up fell back into a vertical drop in which the laws governing falling bodies were challenged solely by the tame movement of textiles.‰Ыќ
—
‰ЫПIt occurred to me that our social life, like an artist‰ЫЄs studio, is filled with abandoned sketches depicting our momentary attempts to capture our need for a great love, but what did not occur to me was that sometimes, if the sketch is not too old, we may return to it and transform it into a completely different work, possibly more important than the one we had originally planned.‰Ыќ
‰ЫПin North America when women finally entered the workplace in large numbers, as though they now stood equal, the women approached the work seriously. in the offices before the women arrived in large numbers, the men maintained an understanding that work was not so serious, that work should not overwhelm the pleasant state of camaraderie that the men had taken pains to cultivate. ... when the women were permitted, the work became more serious. during the war, which was serious, the women worked. after the baby boom, the women, who had been sent back to their kitchens after the men returned from war, wanted to be permitted even though they had no war to permit them. they had more to prove. they had to be serious. when they entered the workplace they picked up the pace. and most of the men stopped launching paper airplanes from their desks.‰Ыќ
‰ЫПAt some point in life the world‰ЫЄs beauty becomes enough. You don‰ЫЄt need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don‰ЫЄt need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens ‰ЫУ that letting go ‰ЫУ you let go because you can. The world will always be there ‰ЫУ while you sleep it will be there ‰ЫТ when you wake it will be there as well. So you can sleep and there is reason to wake. A dead hydrangea is as intricate and lovely as one in bloom. Bleak sky is as seductive as sunshine, miniature orange trees without blossom or fruit are not defective; they are that. So the windows of the greenhouse can be opened and the weather let in. The latch on the door can be left unhooked, the muslin removed, for the soldier ants are beautiful too and whatever they do will be part of it.‰Ыќ
‰ЫПPleasures are like photographs: in the presence of the person we love, we take only negatives, which we develop later, at home, when we have at our disposal once more our inner dark-room, the door of which is strictly forbidden to open while others are present.‰Ыќ
—
‰ЫПThough I met each new day with the thought that I was now on the threshold of life, which still lay before me all unlived and was about to start the very next day, not only had my life in fact begun, but the years to come would not be very different from the years already elapsed.‰Ыќ
‰ЫПBut even with respect to the most insignificant things in life, none of us constitutes a material whole, identical for everyone, which a person has only to go to look up as though we were a book of specifications or a last testament; our social personality is a creation of the minds of others. ... We fill the physical appearance of the individual we see with all the notions we have about him, and in the total picture that we form for ourselves, these notions certainly have the greater part.‰Ыќ
“Reader, it is impossible we should know what sort of person thou wilt be; for, perhaps, thou may‰ЫЄst be as learned in human nature as Shakespeare himself was, and, perhaps thou may‰ЫЄst be no wiser than some of his editors.”
—
“Scenes like this, when painted at large, afford, as we have observed, very little entertainment to the reader. Here, therefore, we shall strictly adhere to a rule of Horace; by which writers are directed to pass over all those matters which they despair of placing in a shining light;‰ЫУ a rule, we conceive, of excellent use as well to the historian as to the poet; and which, if followed, must at least have this good effect, that many a great evil (for so all great books are called) would thus be reduced to a small one.”
—
“We would bestow some pains here in minutely describing all the mad pranks which Jones played on this occasion, could we be well assured that the reader would take the same pains in perusing them; but as we are apprehensive that, after all the labour which we should employ in painting this scene, the said reader would be very apt to skip it entirely over, we have saved ourselves that trouble. To say the truth, we have, from this reason alone, often done great violence to the luxuriance of our genius, and have left many excellent descriptions out of our work, which would otherwise have been in it. And this suspicion, to be honest, arises, as is generally the case, from our own wicked heart; for we have, ourselves, been very often most horridly given to jumping, as we have run through the pages of voluminous historians.‰Ыќ
—
“Foretell me that some tender maid, whose grandmother is yet unborn, hereafter, when, under the fictitious name of Sophia, she reads the real worth which once existed in my Charlotte, shall from her sympathetic breast send forth the heaving sigh. Do thou teach me not only to foresee, but to enjoy, nay, even to feed on future praise. Comfort me by a solemn assurance, that when the little parlour in which I sit at this instant shall be reduced to a worse furnished box, I shall be read with honour by those who never knew now saw me, and whom I shall neither know nor see.”
‰ЫПI used to try to study what it meant to love someone. I would write down quotations from the works of famous writers, writers who did not interest me otherwise, like Hippolyte Taine or Alfred de Musset. For instance, Taine said that to love is to make one‰ЫЄs goal the happiness of another person. I would try to apply this to my own situation. But if loving a person meant putting him before myself, how could I do that? There seemed to be three choices: to give up trying to love anyone, to stop being selfish, or to learn how to love a person while continuing to be selfish. I did not think I could manage the first two, but I thought I could learn how to be just unselfish enough to love someone at least part of the time.‰Ыќ
‰ЫПCould Hitler beat Churchill to sideburns? Himmler said Churchill had a head start and that it might be impossible to catch him. Goring, the vacuous optimist, said the Fuhrer could probably grow sideburns quicker, particularly if we marshalled all of Germany‰ЫЄs might in a concentrated effort. Von Rundstedt, at a meeting of the General Staff, said it was a mistake to try to grow sideburns on two fronts at once and advised that it would be wiser to concentrate all efforts on one good sideburn. Hitler said he could do it on both cheeks simultaneously. Rommel agreed with von Rundstedt. ‰ЫчThey will never come out even, mein Fuhrer,‰ЫЄ he said. ‰ЫчNot if you rush them.‰ЫЄ‰Ыќ
The first ‰ЫПbiographies‰Ыќ of Jane Austen I‰ЫЄve read, but already I‰ЫЄm chafed by the assumptions and dubious deductions. I have my own idea of what Austen was like from what I‰ЫЄve read so far, and I‰ЫЄm still working on perfecting it ‰ЫУ so yes I did learn a little.
The biography annoyed me because of the many assumptions Shields makes. Although she mentions that there is little information, most of which can‰ЫЄt be trusted as truth, she makes statements as though they are fact when I am sure they were deduced from her letters or family stories or other biographers‰ЫЄ guesses. Although I appreciate that a biographer must do what she must to present a readable story, I don‰ЫЄt appreciate a covert manipulation of the reader to believe the author was a certain kind of person, which I can‰ЫЄt believe she was.
After blankly stating that Jane Austen had ‰ЫПbored herself‰Ыќ partway through Lesley Castle and thus never finished it, Weldon quickly adds:
I hate this kind of cold conclusion; these sweeping assessments of motive with which, in the present, we look back at the past. I despise it in biographers, and yet find I am doing it myself. ... The reasons she stopped writing Lesley Castle may have been because she ran out of paper, or shut her thumb on in the lych-gate of Steventon Church the previous Sunday: or because she was reading the manuscript aloud to her family one evening and they all started yawning and looking for the cards. There is simply no way of knowing ‰ЫУ and I take it back.
...
I look at the small, round table in the house at Chawton at which she wrote Emma, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion and am told that when people came into the room she covered her work and put it aside. They deduce from this (a) that she was ashamed of her work and (b) that it was criminal that she should be disturbed in this way. Most writers choose to cover their work when someone else comes into the room. They know it does not appear to best advantage out of context. They fear that, taken line by line, it sounds plain foolish. They do not want to answer questions. ‰Ы_ So the work is covered. It isn‰ЫЄt shame, merely prudence. As for disturbances, some writers thrive on them. For many, if life provides uninterrupted leisure for writing, the urge to write shrivels up. Writing, after all, is part of life, an overflow from it. Take away life and you take away writing.
Sancho: ‰ЫПI only understand that while I‰ЫЄm sleeping I have no fear, or hope, or trouble, or glory; blessed be whoever invented sleep, the mantle that covers all human thought, the food that satisfies hunger, the water that quenches thirst, the fire that warms the cold, the cold that cools down ardor, and, finally, the general coin with which all things are bought, the scale and balance that make the shepherd equal to the king, and the simple man equal to the wise. There is only one defect in sleep, or so I‰ЫЄve heard, and it is that it resembles death, for there is very little difference between a man who is sleeping and a man who is dead.‰Ыќ
Sancho, about his wife Teresa: ‰ЫПI love her more than my eyelashes.‰Ыќ
From “The City”:
He was certain that once, in his dream, he had discovered the gender of the presence. This discovery filled him with excitement as he slept, but upon awakening the certainty disappeared. It didn‰ЫЄt fade, it vanished, overshadowed by diurnal reality.
...
‰ЫчThe presence,‰ЫЄ he said, ‰Ычcould be a man. Nothing leads me to believe that it is a woman.‰ЫЄ
‰ЫчAny sexual definition, my darling, strikes me as scandalous. We are the sex we were assigned; at best we accept it. Let‰ЫЄs hope that in our dreams, if nowhere else, that definition ceases to prevail.‰ЫЄ
‰ЫПThere‰ЫЄs nothing I can remember till we reach the border, marked by a sign that says BIENVENUE on one side and WELCOME on the other. The sign has bullet holes in it, rusting red around the edges. It always did, in the fall the hunters use it for target practice; no matter how many times they replace it or paint it the bullet holes reappear, as though they aren‰ЫЄt put there but grow by a kind of inner logic or infection, like mould or boils. Joe wants to film the sign but David says ‰ЫчNaaa, what for?‰ЫЄ‰Ыќ
‰ЫПRather than saying that every possible universe exists, I‰ЫЄd say that there is a sequence of possible universes, akin to the drafts of a novel. We‰ЫЄre living in a draft version of the universe, and there is no final version. The revisions never stop. / From time to time, it is possible to be aware of this. In particular, when you relax and stop naming things and forming opinions, your consciousness spreads out across several drafts of the universe. Things don‰ЫЄt need to be particularly one way or the other until you pin them down. ‰Ы_ The start of a novel matches its ending; the past matches the future. Changing one thing changes everything. If we know everything about the Now moment, we know the entire past and future.‰Ыќ ‰ЫУ Rudy Rucker
‰ЫПWe have been told by wise men, lamas, and maharishis that it is supposedly all about moments ‰ЫУ to cherish the moment and never mind the continuance of time. But ever since childhood I have realized somehow that the beauty lies in the time before, the hope for, the waiting for, the imaginary picture painted in perfection of that instant in time. And then once it passes, in the blink of an eye, it will be the memory that stays with you, the reflection, the remembrance of that time.‰Ыќ ‰ЫУ Kai Krause