Almost six months ago, I'd written Part 1 of this post. Out of part laziness, too many scribbled half-ideas on paper napkins and more words than notebooks could contain, I'm sending out Part 2.
***
“And the flavor of Pippa's kiss--bittersweet and strange--stayed with me all the way back uptown, swaying and sleepy as I sailed home on the bus, melting with sorrow and loveliness, a starry ache that lifted me up above the windswept city like a kite: my head in the rainclouds, my heart in the sky.”
~Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch
“My heart goes out to him. Sort of. Because empathy depends on how you've spent your day.”
~ George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone (also read his brilliant short story collection here).
“And because there is something they can’t see people think it has to be special, because people always think there is something special about what they can’t see, like the dark side of the moon, or the other side of a black hole, or in the dark when they wake up at night and they’re scared.”
~Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time
“She said she knew she was able to fly because when she came down she always had dust on her fingers from touching the light bulbs.”
~J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
“The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.”
~Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar (read my review on this gorgeous book here).
“It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”
~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the time of Cholera.
“He died violent and young and desperate, just like we all knew he'd die someday.”
~S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
~C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (and the gorgeous Zen comics version of this quote, here)
“Remember: that giants sleep too soundly; that witches are often betrayed by their appetites; dragons have one soft spot, somewhere, always; hearts can be well-hidden, and you can betray them with your tongue. (from "Instructions")
~Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: short fictions and wonders
“I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel, world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go.”
~Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
“The essential matrimonial facts: that to be happy you have to find variety in repetition; that to go forward you have to come back to where you begin.”
~Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex
“No matter where I go, I still end up me. What's missing never changes. The scenery may change, but I'm still the same incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that I can never satisfy. I think that lack itself is as close as i'll come to defining myself.”
~Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun
"Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know—because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot. And when I got it it turned to dust in my hands.”
~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
“[E]verywhere I'm looking at kids, adults mostly don't seem to like them, not even the parents do. They call the kids gorgeous and so cute, they make the kids do the thing all over again so they can take a photo, but they don't want to actually play with them, they'd rather drink coffee talking to other adults. Sometimes there's a small kid crying and the Ma of it doesn't even hear.”
~Emma Donoghue, Room
"If at any time you find it necessary to correct your brother, do not correct him with mud — never, on any account, throw mud at him, because it will spoil his clothes. It is better to scald him a little, for then you obtain desirable results. You secure his immediate attention to the lessons you are inculcating, and at the same time the hot water will have a tendency to move impurities from his person, and possibly the skin, in spots."
a space
and even during the
best moments
and
the greatest times
times
we will know it
we will know it
more than
ever
there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
and
we will wait
and
wait
in that space.”
“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
Like last time, I've linked the books to their Amazon copies (buy them and read!). The list is arbid, but if you read it with one eye closed (preferably your left one), it reads like a short story.
***
“And the flavor of Pippa's kiss--bittersweet and strange--stayed with me all the way back uptown, swaying and sleepy as I sailed home on the bus, melting with sorrow and loveliness, a starry ache that lifted me up above the windswept city like a kite: my head in the rainclouds, my heart in the sky.”
~Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch
“My heart goes out to him. Sort of. Because empathy depends on how you've spent your day.”
~ George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone (also read his brilliant short story collection here).
“And because there is something they can’t see people think it has to be special, because people always think there is something special about what they can’t see, like the dark side of the moon, or the other side of a black hole, or in the dark when they wake up at night and they’re scared.”
~Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time
“She said she knew she was able to fly because when she came down she always had dust on her fingers from touching the light bulbs.”
~J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
“The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.”
~Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar (read my review on this gorgeous book here).
“It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”
~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the time of Cholera.
“He died violent and young and desperate, just like we all knew he'd die someday.”
~S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
~C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (and the gorgeous Zen comics version of this quote, here)
“Remember: that giants sleep too soundly; that witches are often betrayed by their appetites; dragons have one soft spot, somewhere, always; hearts can be well-hidden, and you can betray them with your tongue. (from "Instructions")
~Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: short fictions and wonders
“I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel, world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go.”
~Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
“The essential matrimonial facts: that to be happy you have to find variety in repetition; that to go forward you have to come back to where you begin.”
~Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex
“No matter where I go, I still end up me. What's missing never changes. The scenery may change, but I'm still the same incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that I can never satisfy. I think that lack itself is as close as i'll come to defining myself.”
~Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun
"Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know—because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot. And when I got it it turned to dust in my hands.”
~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
“[E]verywhere I'm looking at kids, adults mostly don't seem to like them, not even the parents do. They call the kids gorgeous and so cute, they make the kids do the thing all over again so they can take a photo, but they don't want to actually play with them, they'd rather drink coffee talking to other adults. Sometimes there's a small kid crying and the Ma of it doesn't even hear.”
~Emma Donoghue, Room
"If at any time you find it necessary to correct your brother, do not correct him with mud — never, on any account, throw mud at him, because it will spoil his clothes. It is better to scald him a little, for then you obtain desirable results. You secure his immediate attention to the lessons you are inculcating, and at the same time the hot water will have a tendency to move impurities from his person, and possibly the skin, in spots."
~Mark Twain in ' Advice to little girls
“Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.”
~ Rumi
“It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.”
“Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.”
~ Rumi
“It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.”
~Raymond Carver, What we talk about when we talk about love.
“there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
“there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
a space
and even during the
best moments
and
the greatest times
times
we will know it
we will know it
more than
ever
there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
and
we will wait
and
wait
in that space.”
~Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone At Times.
“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
~Leonardo da Vinci
“And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been”
~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to A Young Poet
“And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been”
~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to A Young Poet
