Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[kennyc]

"Talk between women friends is always therapy..."
- Jayne Anne Phillips

I've been reading her collection 'Black Tickets' the last week or so along with a variety of other things. She's written some wonderful short stories! (Wedding Picture, Slave, Sweethearts, Stripper.....)

[kennyc]

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.
- E.L. Doctorow (RIP Mr. Doctorow you have given us much!)

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.
- E.L. Doctorow (RIP Mr. Doctorow you have given us much!)

Thanks so much for posting that - a great writer.

[kennyc]

"It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window."
― Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely (born on this day in 1888)

[astrangerhere]

“Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.”

Haper Lee | Go Set a Watchman

As an aside, I actually really, really enjoyed this book. I am an attorney, and a professor of law. I even teach a law and literature class. And this book in no way tarnished my experience of Mockingbird.

[BenG]

“Happy," I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don’t have much faith in them and I am no exception – especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they’re scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary

[WT Sharpe]

.....Termination of activity, cessation from movement and opinion, and in a sense their death, is no evil. Turn thy thoughts now to the consideration of thy life, thy life as a child, as a youth, thy manhood, thy old age, for in these also every change was a death. Is this anything to fear? Turn thy thoughts now to thy life under thy grandfather, then to thy life under thy mother, then to thy life under thy father; and as thou findest many other differences and changes and terminations, ask thyself, Is this anything to fear? In like manner, then, neither are the termination and cessation and change of thy whole life a thing to be afraid of.
..........— Marcus Aurelius (121–180), Roman Emperor and Greek Stoic philosopher. The Meditations (George Long translation), Book IX: 21.

[kennyc]

"The traveling salesmen fed me pills that made the lining of my veins feel scraped out, my jaw ached... I knew every raindrop by its name, I sensed everything before it happened. Like I knew a certain oldsmobile would stop even before it slowed, and by the sweet voices of the family inside, I knew we'd have an accident in the rain. I didn't care. They said they'd take me all the way."
— Denis Johnson (Jesus' Son - Car Crash while Hitchhiking)

[kalwisti]

"We observed that the wind always changed, when Mrs. Pardiggle became the subject of conversation: and that it invariably interrupted Mr. Jarndyce, and prevented his going any farther, when he had remarked that there were two classes of charitable people; one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all. We were therefore curious to see Mrs. Pardiggle, suspecting her to be a type of the former class . . ."

--Charles Dickens, Bleak House (Chapter 8)

Esther's suspicions are confirmed when we meet Mrs. Pardiggle; she is indeed a "type of the former class."

I was hesitant to commit to reading Bleak House, due to its length, but I'm really enjoying it. Esther is a compelling narrator and is more "clever" than she presents herself to be.

[bfisher]

"The age of luxury was ended, and that of comfort had begun" - Nancy Mitford, "Love In a Cold Climate"

[kennyc]

"Whatever the fight, don't be ladylike."
- Mother Jones (Mary Harris Jones) born 7/31/1837
(co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World).

[kennyc]

"She sits there waiting, her dainty fingers poking her hair. Waiting for what? I'd like to know.
It is August.
My life is going to change. I feel it."
- Raymond Carver, Fat

[BenG]

"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say,"
— Edward Snowden

[kennyc]

"Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by kennyc

"Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Thanks for the great Shelly quote on poetry.

"With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things." - William Wordsworth