Laura
‰ЫПI must confess that his affection originated in nothing better than gratitude, or, in other words, that a persuasion of her partiality for him had been the only cause of giving her a serious thought. It is a new circumstance in romance, I acknowledge, and dreadfully derogatory of an heroine‰ЫЄs dignity; but if it be as new in common life, the credit of a wild imagination will at least be all my own.‰Ыќ
I read most of this book on the flights to and from Charlottesville the second-last weekend of April; it provided good company. Squeezed in tightly beside a woman scribbling notes on a scrap of paper on the way to CHO, I quietly and briefly cried at the part about the dog in ‰ЫПJoy Ride‰Ыќ; I actually put down the book and wiped my eyes with my air-dirty fingers.
‰ЫПMom said people are interested in birds only inasmuch as they exhibit human behaviour‰ЫУgreed and stupidity and anger‰ЫУand by doing so they free us from the unique sorrow of being human. She thinks humans are tired of having to take the blame all my themselves for all the badness in the world.
‰ЫПI told Mom my own theory of why we like birds‰ЫУof how birds are a miracle because they prove to us there is a finer, simpler state of being which we may strive to attain.‰Ыќ
I started reading the part about nuclear explosions at the airport while waiting for my delayed flight, and from that point on I had not quite a lump in my throat or a stinging in my eyes, but a strange desire to weep for sadness about the world.
‰ЫП(Every nerve and muscle in Rosamond was adjusted to the consciousness that she was being looked at. She was by nature an actress of parts that entered into her physique: she even acted her own character, and so well, that she did not know it precisely to be her own.)‰Ыќ
‰ЫПYoung folks may get fond of each other before they know what life is, and they may think it all a holiday if they can only get together; but it soon turns into working day, my dear. However, you have more sense than most ‰Ы_.‰Ыќ
‰ЫПMary was fond of her own thoughts, and could amuse herself well sitting in twilight with her hands in her lap; for, having early had strong reason to believe that things were not likely to be arranged for her peculiar satisfaction, she wasted no time in astonishment and annoyance at that fact. And she had already come to take life very much as a comedy in which she had a proud, nay, a generous resolution not to act the mean or trecacherous part.‰Ыќ
‰ЫПThe cubic feet of oxygen yearly swallowed by a full-grown man‰ЫУwhat a shudder they might have created in some Middlemarch circles! ‰ЫчOxygen! nobody knows what that may be‰ЫУis it any wonder the cholera has got to Dantzic? And yet there are people who say quarantine is no good!‰ЫЄ‰Ыќ
‰ЫПShe did not know then that it was Love who had come to her briefly as in a dream before awaking, with the hues of morning on his wings‰ЫУthat it was Love to whom she was sobbing her farewell as his image was banished by the blameless rigour of irresistible day. She only felt that there was something irrevocably amiss and lost in her lot, and her thoughts about the future were the more readily shapen into resolve.‰Ыќ
“...the uniform legend Complete Works of George Deasey.” This legendary library of self-mortification was lost, and widely considered apocryphal, until 1993, when one of its volumes, Racy Attorney #23, turned up at an IKEA store in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where it was mutely serving as a dignified-looking stage property on a floor-model ‰ЫПHjorp‰Ыќ wall unit. It is signed by the author and bears the probably spurious but fascinating inscription To my pal Dick Nixon.”
“Here was a torture that the Greek inventors of the Feast and the Stone had omitted from their Hades: the Blanket of Self-Deception. A lovely warm blanket as far as it covered the soul in torment, but it never quite covered everything. And the nights were getting cold now.”
& that whole thing between Denise and Don Armour.
“Her heart was full and her senses were sharp, but her head felt liable to burst in the vacuum of her solitude.”
‰ЫП‰ЫчCurious circumstance about those initials, sir,‰ЫЄ said Mr. Magnus. ‰ЫчYou will observe–P.M.–post meridian. In hasty notes to intimate acquaintance, I sometimes sign myself ‰ЫПAfternoon.‰Ыќ It amuses my friend very much, Mr. Pickwick.‰ЫЄ‰Ыќ
‰ЫПBut bless our editorial heart, what a long chapter we have been betrayed into! We had quite forgotten all such petty restrictions as chapters, we solemnly declare. So here goes, to give the goblin a fair start in a new one! A clear stage and no favour for the goblines, ladies and gentlemen, if you please.‰Ыќ
‰ЫПI like to work longhand, actually; the only problem is that, once I get jazzed, I can‰ЫЄt keep up with the lines forming in my head and I get frazzled.‰Ыќ
‰ЫПSomeone ... once wrote that all novels are really letters aimed at one person. As it happens, I believe this. I think that every novelist has a single ideal reader; that at various points during the composition of the story, the writer is thinking, ‰ЫчI wonder what he/she will think when he/she reads this part?‰ЫЄ‰Ыќ
“Or else, just possibly, the principal is aware how big a favor it is that he‰ЫЄs asking. He‰ЫЄs been trying to pretend it‰ЫЄs a small, good thing, but they both know better. He‰ЫЄs asking someone on one of the lowest rungs of the high school‰ЫЄs social ladder–a person nearly as friendless as the boy she‰ЫЄs to befriend–to descend to the very bottom of the ladder itself, into the damp darkness where those dwell who have no hope or recourse but to wait patiently for their eventual rescue in the form of graduation (if applicable), college (ditto), a job (in Empire Falls?), marriage (implausible) or death (finally).”
“The problem, as I see it, is that a sad percentage of gorgeous women just settle for being gorgeous. They get to sixteen, go, ‰ЫчWell, I‰ЫЄm gorgeous, people like me, that‰ЫЄs it,‰ЫЄ and just stop. I mean, they‰ЫЄve got nothing on the girls who struggle onward with zits and bad dates, the girls who fight life every step of the way so by the time they‰ЫЄre twenty they‰ЫЄre funny and smart and cynical and utterly, utterly desirable.”
That quote makes me think of a million different contrary thoughts, but, in it essence, it is a good quote.
So now when I think of Vonnegut, I think ‰ЫПWIDE-OPEN BEAVERS!‰Ыќ
‰ЫПHe made carbon copies of nothing he wrote. He mailed off manuscripts without enclosing stamped, self-addressed envelopes for their safe return. Sometimes he didn‰ЫЄt even include a return address. He got names and addresses of publishers from magazines devoted to the writing business, which he read avidly in the periodical rooms of public libraries. He thus got in touch with a firm called World Classics Library, which published hard-core pornography in Los Angeles, California.‰Ыќ
“NNYC's harbor's Liberty Island's gigantic Lady has the sun for a crown and holds what looks like a huge photo album under one iron arm, and the other arm holds aloft a product. The product is changed each 1 Jan. by brave men with pitons and cranes.”
“We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. God or Satan, politics or grammar, topology or philately – the object seemed incidental to this will to give oneself away, utterly. To games or needles, to some other person. Something pathetic about it. A flight-from in the form of a plunging-into. Flight from exactly what? These rooms blandly filled with excrement and meat? To what purpose? This was why they started us here so young: to give ourselves away before the age when the questions why and to what grow real beaks and claws. It was kind, in a way.”
“Do you know why books as such are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more ‘literary' you are. That's my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.”
“‘I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do. If a personality fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that personality selects is absolutely delightful to me.'”
“Amory wondered how people could fail to notice that he was a boy marked for glory, and when faces of the throng turned toward him and ambiguous eyes stared into his, he assumed the most romantic of expressions and walked on the air cushions that lie on the asphalts of fourteen. ... It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being.”
