last updated: 30 December 2001
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title |
author |
comments / quotes |
| Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates | Tom Robbins |
....It's'government service, Maestra. Morality's scarcely an issue.... ....The sun dropped into the horizon line like a coin dropping into a slot. The ocean bit it to make sure it wasn't counterfeit.... ....Heh! Self-esteem is for sissies. Accept that you're a pimple and try to keep a lively sense of humor about it. That way lies grace--and maybe even glory.... ....In a reality made of language, the people who get to name things have psychological ownership of those things.... In a way, we're like linguistic wolves, lifting our legs on patches of cultural ground to mark them with verbal urine as territory that we alone control. Or maybe not.... ...."What? Are you mad? How could you possibly be a member of the Church and yet not belong or believe?" "Easy. It's the best way. To practice a religion can be lovely, to believe in one is almost always disastrous."... ...."Mr. Switters defeats melancholy by refusing to take things, including himself, too seriously." "But many things are--" "Are they? What I've learned... is that no matter how valid, how vital, one's belief system might be, one undermines that system and ultimately negates it when one gets rigid and dogmatic in one's adherence to it."... ....Terrorism is the only imaginable logical response to America's foreign policy, just as street crime is the only imaginable logical response to America's drug policy.... ....Peeple of zee wurl, relax!... |
| Island of the Sequined Love Nun | Christopher Moore |
....He didn't understand religion. It was like heroin or golf:
He knew a lot of people did it, but he didn't understand why.... ....There had been a time when [he] was so ignorant of computers that he thought a mouse pad was Disney's brand of sanitary napkin... |
| Heart of Darkness | Joseph Conrad |
(yet another re-read) ....It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there had never been anything like it, and never can be... (and, gee, would many women not say the same of many men) ....The mind of man is capable of anything -- because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage -- who can tell? -- but truth -- truth stripped of its cloak of time.... ....Soul! If anybody had ever struggled with a soul, I am the man.... ....Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be.... |
| An Invisible Sign of My Own | Aimee Bender |
....It's a fine art, when you think abou it.
To quit well requires an intuitive sense of beauty; you have to feel the moment of turn,
right when desire makes an appearance, here is the instant to be severed, whack,
this is the moment where quitting is ripe as a peach turning sweet on the vine: snap, the cord is cracked,
peach falls to the floor, black and silver with flies.... ....The world can ask you to participate, but it's a day-by-day decision if you want to agree to that proposal.... ...there is something so awful, something so gross about watching someone who loves you struggle to believe what you both know, deep down, is partially a lie.... |
| Animal Farm | George Orwell |
(and another re-read) ...life would go on as it had always gone on -- that is, badly.... ....All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.... |
| Brave New World | Aldous Huxley |
(another re-read) ...that human beings are given free will in order to choose between insanity on the one hand and lunacy on the other... ....O brave new world that has such people in it. Let's start at once.... ....So you don't much like civilization, Mr. Savage.... ....Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the pictureesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.... ....But you've got to stick to one set of postulates. You can't play Electro-magnetic Golf according to the rules of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy.... |
| 1984 | George Orwell | (another re-read: We, 1984, ... need to re-read Brave New World now) ...Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty.... ...To dissemble your feelings, to control your face, to do what everyone else was doing, was an instinctive reaction.... ...Only because I prefer a positive to a negative. In this game that we're playing, we can't win. Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that's all.... ...They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable.... ...You will have to get used to living without results and without hope. You will work for a while, you will be caught, you will confess, and then you will die. Those are the only results that you will ever see.... ...At present nothing is possible except to extend the area of sanity little by little....
..."How can I help it?" he blubbered. "How canI help seeing what is front of my eyes? Two and two are four." |
| Her Daughter's Eyes | Jessica Barksdale Inclan | ....She wondered how it was that people came together and were pulled apart, how it was decided, what factors kept them all willing to try and try again, desperate to connect with someone else, so sad when it didn't work out.... |
| Children of the Storm Childhood memories of World War II |
Charles Perkins [Ed.] | From the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.; well worth the visit. |
| Children's Drawings and Poems from the Terezin Concentration Camp, 1942-1944 | Children of Terezin | Where there are other, nicer people, Somewhere into the far unknown, There, where no one kills another. Maybe more of us, A thousand strong, Will reach this goal Before too long. - Alena Synkova |
| Zen for Cats | Henry Beard |
Straight lines never lead to success Things are found only by indirection Nap or play? | A hard question. | I'll sleep on it. |
| Mountain Time | Ivan Doig | ...I am a fifty-year old unfeathered biped carrying too much weight. With a marriage behind me that I wouldn't wish on an alimony lawyer. And grown children who maybe are what they are because I didn't wage a fifteen-year war over them with their mother, and they don't care spit about me. The only occupation I've ever had is about to turn into street litter.... |
| fresh air fiend Travel Writings |
Paul Theroux |
....Having lived through the whole electronic revolution, I know that much of what I have seen is not progress but
folie de grandeur. It is misleading, creating the illusion of knowledge, which is in fact a profound ignorance.... ....I found out much more about the world and myself by being unconnected.... ....You can go anywhere, you can do anything, if you're not in a hurry.... ....I realized that it was much better to be neglected than manipulated, and I had learned that you make your own life... ....Air travel is very simple and annoying and a cause of anxiety. It is like being at the dentist's; even the chairs are like dentist's chairs.... |
| Death of a Red Heroine | Qui Xiaolong |
A murder mystery with Chinese culture and politics, human nature and experiences, ethics, individuality vs. society,
poetry and literature, and authentic cuisine.
An interesting and excellent read. ....As our ancient sage says, "Eight or nine out of ten times, things will go wrong in this world of ours"... ....Everything can be seen in terms of politics... but politics is not everything.... ....If you work hard enough at something, it begins to make itself part of you, even though you do not really like it and know that part isn't real... ....The world is a stage -- or all sorts of stages.... ....If two hearts are united forever, What matters the separation -- day after day, night after night?... ....After all the years we've wasted... we're together tonight... ....There was no salvaging the past, except by being themselves in the present.... |
| Prodigal Summer | Barbara Kingsolver |
....She needed to listen to this: prodigal summer, the season of extravagant procreation.
It could wear out everything in its path with its passionate excesses,
but nothing alive with wings or a heart or a seed curled into itself in the ground could resist
welcoming it back when it came.... ....Every creature alive believes this: The center of everything is me. Every life has its own kind of worship, I think, but do you think a salamander is worshiping some God that looks like a big two-legged man? Go on!... ....We're only what we are: a woman cycling with the moon, and a tribe of men trying to have sex with the sky.... ....It made for a long, lonely life, this business of getting things right.... ...yet -- we're still human. Why not just give in and live till you die?... ....Solitude is a human presumption....Every choice is a world made new for the chosen.... |
| White Oleander | Janet Fitch |
....And I realized as I walked through the neighborhood how each house could contain a completely different reality.
In a single block, there could be fifty separate worlds.
Nobody ever really knew what was going on just next door.... ....Why did my mother have to get in the middle? But that was my mother, she always had to be the center of attention, everything had to be about her.... ....You ask me about regret? Let me tell you a few things about regret, my darling. There is no end to it. You cannot find the beginning of the chain that brought us from there to here. Should you regret the whole chain, and the air in between, or each link separately, as if you could uncouple them? Do you regret the beginning which ended so badly, or just the ending itself? I've given more thought to this question than you can begin to imagine.... |
| She's Come Undone | Wally Lamb |
....The ritual both soothed and disappointed me.
You were the same person, no matter what state you happened to be stuck breathing in.... ...further reduced my craziness -- shrunk it down like a tumor. It was a matter of perspective, I began to see. The whole world was crazy; I'd flattered myself by assuming I was a semifinalist.... ....I know it's a crock of shit. I ain't offering you happily-ever-after. I'm offering you... happily-maybe-sometimes-ever-after. Sort of. You know, with warts and shit.... ....People waste their happiness -- that's what makes me sad. Everyone's so scared to be happy.... I'll give you what I leaned from all this. Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love.... |
| Tierra del Fuego | Sylvia Iparaguirre | ....Learn to give up excess.... When any man insults you, don't do anything, talk alone with the one who offended you when you both calm down. Think: others have feelings just like you.... When you catch a big fish, you must share it; keep the smaller part. Children belong to everyone, look after them, help them, never punish them: you were once a child.... Take care of the water; the trees, the fishes, and the animals belong to everyone. Don't kill just to kill. Light the fire at night to keep you warm and don't let it die.... |
| While I Was Gone | Sue Miller |
...I would say we have lived happily, if not ever after, at least enough of the time....
There are always compromises, of course, but they are at the heart of what it means to be married.
They are, occasionally, everything.... ....Mother just left my room -- my room, which she acts like she can come in whenever she wants. Big fucking stink. I was late getting back last night, so now I must be punished. 'What do you think would be appropriate, Cass?' Well how do I fucking know? Why doesn't she just say what she thinks, why isn't she honest enough just to be angry and invent her own goddamn punishment? No. There has to be this fake talk. Doesn't she realize????? we are ENEMIES!!!! Meanwhile, she's sitting on MY bed, touching MY stuff. There is nothing about her that doesn't disgust me.... ....Well, all right. Having children teaches you, I think, that love can survive your being despised in every aspect of yourself. That you need not collapse when the shriek comes: Don't you get it? I hate you! But you do need to get it. You do need to understand and accept being hated. I think this is one of the greatest gifts children can give you, as long as it doesn't last.... |
| Chocolate Jesus | Stephan Jaramillo |
....Twenty-seven minutes down, only 363 to go until he could breathe the fresh smog outside.... |
| A Man in Full | Tom Wolfe |
....You don't understand women... you really don't.
Man at his most conniving is no match for Woman at hers.... ....Am I like that character in that book... the one where the man gets a second life--and helplessly repeats the first one?... ....Who was this superfluous woman? Who was this invisible ex-wife? Who was this social ghost (without a husband at her side to give her an identity)?... [this book shows many different, sometimes obnoxious, social perspectives] ...What would Epictetus have done with this bunch? What could he have done? How do you aply his lessons two thousand years later, in this grimy gray pod, this pigsty full of beasts who grunted about motherfuckin' this and motherfuckin' that and turning boys into B-cats and jookin' punks?... |
| Lizard | Banana Yoshimoto |
....I shall refer to her as Lizard here, but not because of the small lizard tattoo that I discovered on her inner thigh.... ....This type of guilt is so fundamental, like sexual desire or bodily functions, that no one can share it.... ....No one can survive childhood without being wounded. Everyone remembers at least one time when their parents rejected them, pushed them away... |
| The Story of B | Daniel Quinn |
....Anyone who thinks the Church is open to new ideas is living in a dreamworld.... ....Nothing in the community lives in isolation from the rest... Nothing lives only for itself... Nothing is untouchable or untouched.... ....We dont have to change HUMANKIND in order to survive. We only have to change a single culture.... ....This was the one right way for people to live. This bizarre notion made it impossible for people to give it up, no matter how badly it worked.... |
| Girlfriend in a Coma | Douglas Coupland |
....I still lived...with the belief that meaning could pop into my life at any moment.
I was getting...no younger, yet for some reason not particularly wiser.... ....I didn't realize then that so much of being adult is reconciling ourselves with the awkwardness and strangeness of our own feelings. Youth is the time of life lived for some imaginary audience.... ....At what point in our lives do we stop blurring? When do we become crisp individuals? What must we do in order to end these fuzzy identities-- to clarify just who it is we really are?... ....Most people don't learn things along the way.... Most people, given a second chance, fuck it up completely. It's one of those laws of the universe that you can't shake. People, I have noticed, only seem to learn once they get their third chance-- after losing and wasting vast sums of time, money, youth, and energy... |
| Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire | J.K. Rowling | and the saga continues... |
| Senor Vivo and the Coca Lords | Louis De Bernieres |
....Ever since his young wife had given birth to a cat as an unexpected consequence of his expiriments in sexual alchemy... ....But it was also a superstitious country, a country where it was possible to believe every religion all at once... ....Sometimes it seems as though I lose consciousness when it is as good as that... ....There is a kind of psychic telegraph that exists among those who live close to their emotions and are not afraid to express them... ....I do not want you to believe any of this because it is all crap, but it is the crap in which the piles of our psuedo-European culture are embedded, so you had better understand it because no one who does not understand the history and taxonomy of crap will ever come to know the difference between crap and pseudocrap and noncrap.... |
| Cry, The Beloved Country | Alan Paton |
....But there is only one thing that has power completely, and that is love.
Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power... ....Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved. Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end. The sun pours down on the earth, on the lovely land that man cannot enjoy. He knows only the fear of his heart.... ....Yes, it is the dawn that has come...as it has come for a thousand centuries, never failing. But when that dawn will come, of our emancipation, from the fear of bondage and bondage of fear, why, that is a secret. |
| The English Patient | Michael Ondaatje |
....It's only the rich who can't afford to be smart.
They're compromised. They got locked years ago into privilege.
They have to protect their belongings. No one is meaner than the rich. Trust me.
But they have to follow the rules of their shitty civilized world.
They declare war, they have honour, and they can't leave.
But you two. We three. We're free... Be irresponsible. Luck runs out.... ...I hated confrontation. It didn't stop me doing whatever I wished or doing things the way I wanted to. Quite early on I had discovered the overlooked space open to those of us with a silent life. I didn't argue... I just stood there, still, until I was invisible, and then I went through. Like a cricket. Like a hidden cup of water.... ...He's never sure what an eye reveals. But he can read how mouths darken into callousness, suggest tenderness. One can often misjudge an eye from its reaction to a simple beam of sunlight. ....Fathers die. You keep on loving them in any way you can. You can't hide him away in your heart.... |
| The Celestine Prophecy | James Redfield |
...it's hard for me to concentrate on feeling cosmic when people are trying to kill me.... ....The Seventh Insight says that the challenge is to find the silver lining in every event, no matter how negative.... (read this as a novel, but consider applicability of the philosophy) |
| Animal Husbandry | Laura Zigman |
....Short of death, I think, there are few things sadder in this life than watching someone walk away from you after
they have left you, watching the distance between your two bodies expand until there is nothing but empty
space, and silence.... ....Sometimes there aren't answers. Sometimes things just happen. They just are.... ....Sometimes a monkey is just a monkey. And sometimes a guy is just being a guy.... ....Moo who?... |
| A Confederacy of Dunces | John Kennedy Toole | (another re-read) When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. Jonathan Swift "Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting" ....A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself. The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss.... ...."You amaze me. To think that they're letting you run around loose. In a way I respect you." "Thank you very much. Most fools don't comprehend my worldview at all." "I wouldn't imagine so."... ....You could tell by the way that he talked, though, that he had gone to school a long time. That was probably what was wrong with him. George had been wise enough to get out of school as soon as possible. He didn't want to end up like that guy.... |
| One True Thing | Anna Quindlen |
....All college towns are essentially the same.
There is something strange about the roots of people settled in a place where everyone else passes through.... ....Whenever one of you guys says people deal with bad stuff in their own way, it means you don't deal with it at all. You just wait for it to go away. You don't help. You don't listen. You don't call. You don't write. WE deal with in in our own way. WE deal with it. We girls. We make the meals and clean up the messes and take the crap and listen to you talk about how you're dealing with it in you own way. What way? No way!... ...."Suffering transforms," she said. "Suffering sucks," I said. "I agree. With both conclusions, actually."... ....It's so much easier, to learn to love what you have instead of yearning always for what you're missing, or what you imagine you're missing. It's so much more peaceful.... ...you have a lot of character failings, the most profound of which at this point seems to be the mistaken impression that people are sane and sensible.... ...if, if, if, if... |
| We | Yevgeny Zamyatin |
Written in 1921, We was the inspiration for Orwell's 1984. ...how should I put this? -- her tongue isn't set at the right speed. The mps (motions per second) of the tongue must always be a little less than the mps of thought, and never the other way round.... ....Who knows who you really are? A person is like a novel: Up to the very last page you don't know how it's going to end. Otherwise, there'd be no point in reading.... ...I'd never known this before, but now I do, and so do you: Laughter comes in different colors.... .... "This is unthinkable! It's stupid! Can't you see that what you're plotting is...revolution?" "Yes--revolution! Why is that stupid?" "Stupid--because there can't be a revolution ... our revolution was the final one. And there cannot be any further revolutions of any kind. Everybody knows that...." "My dear, you are a mathematician.... Tell me the final number" "...that's stupid. Since the number of numbers is infinite, how can there be a final one?" "And how can there be a final revolution?..." |
| African Nights | Kuki Gallmann |
More stories, reference: I Dreamed of Africa Note, the movie I Dreamed of Africa was not well done (IMO), very fragmented compared to book... read the book before seeing the movie... or skip the movie. ....Africa is a continent of extremes.... ....The rain-stick belongs to myths and legends; and as one has learnt in all the tales one has read as a child, magic powers should not be abused, lest one should lose them.... ....In this land of the inexplicable, where most believe in magic, and where anything can happen... ....Otherwise, nobody made much of a fuss about it. As this is Africa where one accepts the inexplicable.... ....I knew what I wanted to do and there is no work too humble, when you do it for a purpose.... |
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