March 2010
4 posts
‘There are readings- of the same text- that are dutiful, readings that map and dissect, reading that hear a rustling of unheard sounds, that count grey little pronouns for pleasure or instruction, and for a time do not hear golden or apples. There are personal readings, that snatch for personal readings, I am full of love, or disgust, or fear, I scan for love, or disgust, or fear. There...
Buttercup: Westley. Oh, Westley darling! [Buttercup kisses Westley passionately] Buttercup: Westley, why won’t you hold me? Westley: Gently. Buttercup: At a time like this, that’s all you can think to say. Gently? [Buttercup continues kissing Westley and lifts up his head] Westley: Gently! [Westely’s head falls and he winces] Westley: Ughhhh!
-The Princess Bride
‘By necessity, I suppose, it is difficult for me to explain in English exactly what i mean. I can only say that an incendium is in its nature entirely different from the feu with which a Frenchman lights his cigarette, and both are very different from the stark, inhuman pur that the Greeks knew, the pur that roared from the towers of Ilion, or leapt and screamed on that desolate, windy beach...
“‘Your true love lives. And you marry another. True Love saved her in the...”
– the ancient boo-er, The Princess Bride
December 2009
1 post
“But to be included in Dick Diver’s world for a while was a remarkable experience: people believed he made special reservations about them, recognizing the proud uniqueness of their destinies, buried under the compromises of how many years. He won everyone quickly with an exquisite consideration and a politeness that moved so fast and intuitively that it could be examined only in its...
October 2009
4 posts
“The arsonist stood up in court and said” I am not an arsonist. I dreamt the building was a phoenix and needed my help. Before sticking me in a sentence, like a four-syllable word with only one meaning, consider what becomes of the ashes: see how after smearing a palm-full hair grows on a bald man’s scalp, how just a sprinkle makes irises sprout through sidewalk cracks. You call...
“Gaston was not only a fierce lover, with endless wisdom and imagination, but he...”
September 2009
8 posts
How It Will End
We’re walking on the boardwalk but stop when we see a lifeguard and his girlfriend fighting. We can’t hear what they’re saying, but it is as good as a movie. We sit on a bench to find out how it will end. I can tell by her body language he’s done something really bad. She stands at the bottom of the ramp that leads to his hut. He tries to walk halfway down to meet her, but...
Seven days to go! I love you, i love you, and i can’t wait.
“It’s not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability...”
– Stephen Fry, “Moab is my Washpot.”
“The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.”
– “In a Station of the Metro”- Ezra Pound.
i like hemmingway a lot despite finding his novels arrogant, insufferable and tiresome to read. partly because his short stories are simple, and beautiful, and amazingly, achingly, heartbreakingly true. but mostly because of the constant tension in all but his very longest and very polished of pieces, where the words are a little bit strained and desperate and hoarse, like when someone is telling...
“The more you read, though, the more you’ll see that literature is actually...”
– Dakin, “The History Boys”.
“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they...”
– “The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock”- T.S Eliot, 1917
July 2009
1 post
June 2009
4 posts
“October knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter,...”
– Neil Gaiman
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else...”
– Ambrose Redmoon
May 2009
8 posts
“Hope” is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings...”
– Emily Dickinson
Hills Like White Elephants
The girl stood up and walked to the end of the station. Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees.
‘And we could have all this,’ she said. ‘And we could have everything and every day we make it more...
“A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR
I am haunted by humans.”
– The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
“The best moments in reading are when you come across something- a thought, a...”
– Hector, ‘The History Boys’.
April 2009
2 posts
“What he wanted, most of all, was for somebody, anybody, to tell him that someday it would be alright. It did not even really have to be someday in the near future, so long as he could eventually have the knowledge, plain, clear and simple, that the terrible, gaping Will cut-out shape in his life would one day be filled, and that soon strangers, terrible and awkward in their horrified,...
“claudio is a love chump- he thinks it is all rainbows and unicorns”
– anon, on Much Ado About Nothing.
March 2009
1 post
“let us go, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky.”