words i'd like to use more often: froth, debacle: Archive

Jun 26, 20103 notes

“At the same time, she felt strangely displaced, not quite her usual tidy ego but merged with Leonard into a great big protoplasmic, ecstatic thing. She thought she’d been in love before. She knew she’d had sex before. But all those torrid adolescent gropings, all those awkward back-seat romps, the meaningful, performative summer nights with her high-school boyfriend Jim McManus, even the tender sessions with Barry where he insisted that they look into each other’s eyes as they came, none of that had prepared her for the wallop, the all-consuming pleasure, of this.” —“Extreme Solitude”, Jeffrey Eugenides

Jun 24, 2010

Jun 21, 2010880 notes

“He was a thorough good sort; a bit limited; a bit thick in the head; yes; but a thorough good sort. Whatever he took up he did in the same matter-of-fact sensible way; without a touch of imagination, without a spark of brilliancy, but with the inexplicable niceness of his type. He ought to have been a country gentleman—he was wasted on politics. He was at his best out of doors, with horses and dogs—how good he was, for instance, when that great shaggy dog of Clarissa’s got caught in a trap and had its paw half torn off, and Clarissa turned faint and Dalloway did the whole thing; bandaged, made splints; told Clarissa not to be a fool. That was what she liked him for perhaps—that was what she needed. “Now, my dear, don’t be a fool. Hold this—fetch that,” all the time talking to the dog as if it were a human being.” —

—Mrs. Dalloway

this is me. this is what i like in men currently (unfortunately?)

Jun 19, 20101 note

“When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away—even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaningless of modern life still have to drink water from time to time. One of my students wrote a story about a nun who got a piece of dental floss stuck between her lower left molars, and who couldn’t get it out al day long. I thought that was wonderful. The story dealt with issues a lot more important than dental floss, but what kept readers going was anxiety about when the dental floss would finally be removed. Nobody could read that story without fishing around in his mouth with a finger. When you exclude plot, when you exclude anyone’s wanting anything, you exclude the reader, which is a mean-spirited thing to do.” —Kurt Vonnegut

Jun 17, 20101 note

“Her face was always enough answer for any one, but she decided to speak.” —This Side of Paradise

Jun 14, 2010

words i'd like to use more often: froth, debacle

July 2010

June 2010