The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

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An hour or two went by. It must have been a good conversation, because the next thing he knew Alma has told him to close his eyes. Then she kissed him. Her kiss was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering. He felt his body shaking. He was scared he was about to lose control of his muscles. For anyone else, it was one thing, but for him it wasn’t so easy, because this man believed- and had believed for as long as he could remember- that part of him was made of glass. He imagined a wrong move in which he fell and shattered in front of her. He pulled away, even though he didn’t want to. He smiled at Alma’s feet, hoping she’d understand. They talked for hours.

That night he went home full of joy. He couldn’t sleep, so excited was he for the next day when he and Alma had a date to go to the movies. He picked her up the following evening and gave her a bunch of yellow daffodils. At the theater, he fought-and triumphed over! -the perils of sitting. He watched the whole movie leaning forward, so that his weight was resting on the underside of his thighs and not on the part of him that was made of glass. If Alma noticed she didn’t say. He moved his knee a little, and a little more, until it was resting against hers. He was sweating. When the movie was over, he had no idea what it had been about. He suggested they take a walk through the park. This time it was he who stopped, took Alma in his arms, and kissed her. When his knees started to shake and he pictured himself lying in splinters of glass, he fought the urge to pull away. He ran his fingers down her spine over her thin blouse, and for a moment he forgot the danger he was in, grateful for the world which purposefully puts divisions in place so that we can overcome them, feeling he joy of getting closer, even if deep down we can never forget the sadness of our insurmountable differences. Before he knew it, he was shaking violently. He seized his muscles to try to stop. Alma felt his hesitation. She leaned back and looked at him with something like hurt, and then he almost but didn’t say the two sentences he’d been meaning to say for years: Part of me is made of glass, and also, I love you.

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"I love people. Everybody. I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me. My love's not impersonal yet not wholly subjective either. I would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person. But I am not omniscient. I have to live my life, and it is the only one I'll ever have. And you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time."

--1950-07-07

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

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Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy.
- George MacDonald, from Phantastes

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Who's gonna take that toe ring you danced all night on?
Who's gonna keep your writings and sob over their forecast?
Who's gonna smell your absense in your clothes and burn them,
those jeans we played mischief in?
Give them to the army surplus store (I couldn't do your figure justice).
Who's gonna blow wishes with my fallen eye-lashes?
Who's gonna come that close to my face, ever?
Who'll take my breath away just by breathing?
Who'll silence me just by being?

Dear S., dance with me in the dark of your familiar.
Let's touch swan-like for a last time, in this hour,
wrap necks and
coo (your favourite word)
I'll say it
without saying it.

- Amber Tamblyn, from the book Dear S.

"People are extraordinary: they wouldn't dare ask you about your bodily functions, but they question you bluntly about the reasons for your actions, without shame, without reticence..."

Retreat From Love, by Colette

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"Most persons have died before they expire,--died to all earthly longings, so that the last breath is only, as it were, the locking of the door of the already deserted mansion"

Book : The Professor at the Breakfast Table
Author : Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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When does murder begin?
With the pull of a trigger? With the formation of a motive? Or does it begin long before, when a child swallows more pain than love and is forever changed?
Perhaps it doesn't matter.
Or perhaps it matters more than anything else.
We judge and punish based on facts, but facts are not truth. Facts are like buried skeleton uncovered long after death. Truth is fluid. Truth is alive. To know the truth requires understanding, the most difficult human art. It requires seeing all things at once, forward and backward, the way God sees.

Blood Memory, Greg Iles

Litrary Quotes

None of this fits together? How very true! A woman you leave behind to go to the movies, an old man to whom you have stopped listening, a death that redeems nothing, and then, on the other hand, the whole radiance of the world. What difference does it make if you accept everything? Here are three destinies, different and yet alike. Death for us all, but his own death to each. After all, the sun still warms our bones for us.

- from 'the right side and the wrong side,' by albert camus, translated by ellen conroy kennedy.

The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.
E. M. Forster

Mediocrity

Mediocrity is palpable. It hurts but still everything feels normal.

It is more like "When there is no money or will to violence, tragedy cannot be generated."

- The quote from E. M. Forster's Howards End.

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters by JD Salinger

She's an irritating, opinionated woman, a type Buddy can't stand. I don't think he could see her for what she is. A person deprived, for life, of any understanding or taste for the main current of poetry that flows through things, all things. She might as well be dead, and yet she goes on living, stopping off at delicatessens, seeing her analyst, consuming a novel every night, putting on her girdle, plotting for Muriel's health and prosperity. I love her. I find her unimaginably brave.

All from Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld

"At that time in my life, no conclusion was a bad conclusion. Something ended, and you stopped wishing and worrying. You could consider your mistakes, and you might be embarrassed by them, but the box was sealed, the door was shut, you were no longer immersed in the confusing middle...Of course, I didn't imagine then that I could have had a real relationship with any guy. I thought that by virtue of being me I was disqualified. None of which justifies how I acted. I was wrong, I screwed up—how else can I say it?"


"...but I couldn't ask because what I'd really have been asking was a bigger question, and I was always afraid that I already knew the answer. You only ever try to pin a person down because they are not yours, because you can't."


"I think adults forget just how much faith teenagers can have in them, just how willing to believe that adults, by virtue of being adults, know absolute truths, or that absolute truths are even knowable."