February 2012
16 posts
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“I wonder how I got so screwed up? I don’t seem to be able to reconcile art...”
– -Elaine Dundy, The Dud Avocado
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“I think that when a woman has kept her legs closed
for 35 years
it’s too...”
– -Charles Bukowski, “a literary romance”
I am not a great consumer of poetry, but these last lines of Bukowski’s poem sometimes bounce around in my mind. It’s hard not to react to them in one way or another.
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“Unthinking men are like sleepwalkers.”
– -Hannah Arendt, from The Life of the Mind via The Portable Hannah Arendt
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“She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.”
– -Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
I’ve read this line translated in a couple different ways and, regardless of the wording, this line always brings a bit of lady humor to the reader.
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“There was nothing to look forward to except shame, destitution, and the streets....”
– -Shchedrin, The Golovlyov Family
I enjoy the wit of this excerpt…also the idea that shame is a habit. Though, the fact that the book on the whole is rather depressing may not surprise you.
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“…a smile which weds the coquette and the mother.”
– -James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
I like imagining exactly what this smile looks like—it’s the ultimate feminine curl of the lips.
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“I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like...”
– -Margaret Atwood, “Variations on the Word Sleep”
In honor of Valentine’s Day, I am sharing the last portion of one of my favorite poems.
About ten years ago, I described my idea of love to a good friend. She brought me this poem shortly thereafter—it’s just another...
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“I suppose mouths experience it first, the resuscitation, the life thrill, and...”
– -Edna O’Brien, Night
Sounds like quite a kiss.
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“June came and the days grew so hot and lazy that they could not worry even about...”
– -F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
I don’t actually think this is a great quote, but I know exactly the type of summer moment he’s writing about and I wouldn’t mind having one, sooner rather than later.
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“Only success, and that at a perilous peak, can give relief, but for artists...”
– -Truman Capote, “New York”
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“It is late at night. I have already crossed the threshold of fatigue and am in...”
– -Viktor Shklovsky, Third Factory
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“She could remember it all but none of it seemed to come to anything. She had a...”
– -Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays 