Tess’s Comments (group member since Apr 15, 2013)

Tess’s comments from the Insert the Tense group.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.” – 1

“All I know is that while the Haze woman and I went down the steps into the breathless garden, my knees were like reflections of knees in rippling water, and my lips were like sand, and--
"That was my Lo," she said, "and these are my lilies."
"Yes," I said, "yes. They are beautiful, beautiful, beautiful." ” – 10

“Exhibit number two is a pocket diary bound in black imitation leather, with a golden year, 1947, en escalier, in its upper left-hand corner.
I speak of this neat product of the Blank Blank Co., Blankton, Mass., as if it were really before me. Actually, it was destroyed five years go and what we examine now (by courtesy of a photographic memory) is but its brief materialization, a puny unfledged phoenix.
I remember the thing so exactly because I wrote it really twice. First I jotted down each entry in pencil (with many erasures and corrections) on the leaves of what is commercially known as a "typewriter tablet"; then, I copied it out with obvious abbreviations in my smallest, most satanic, hand in the little black book just mentioned.” – 11

“(...) the exquisite stainless tenderness seeping through the musk and the mud, through the dirt and the death, oh God, oh God.” – 11

“The passion I had developed for that nymphet--for the first nymphet in my life that could be reached at last by my awkward, aching, timid claws--would have certainly landed me again in a sanatorium, had not the devil realized that I was to be granted some relief if he wanted to have me as a plaything for some time longer.” – 12

“O my Carmen, my little Carmen!
Something, something those something nights,
And the stars, and the cars, and the bars and the barmen--
And, O my charmin', our dreadful fights.
And the something town where so gaily, arm in
Arm, we went, and our final row,
And the gun I killed you with, O my Carmen,
The gun I am holding now.” – 13

“You who conceal your strongest feelings must think me a shameless little idiot for throwing open my poor bruised heart like this.” – 16

“So Humbert the Cubus schemed and dreamed--and the red sun of desire and decision (the two things that create a live world) rose higher and higher, while upon a succession of balconies a succession of libertines, sparkling glass in hand, toasted the bliss of past and future nights.” – 17

“And when, by means of pitifully ardent, naively lascivious caresses, she of the noble nipple and massive thigh prepared me for the performance of my nightly duty, it was still a nymphet's scent that in despair I tried to pick up, as I bayed through the undergrowth of dark decaying forests.” – 18

“She had come to my side and had fallen on her knees and was slowly, but very vehemently, shaking her head and clawing at my trousers. She said she had never realized. She said I was her ruler and her god. She said Louise had gone, and let us make love right away. She said I must forgive her or she would die.” – 21

“He suggested I play golf, but finally agreed to give me something that, he said, "would really work"; and going to a cabinet, he produced a vial of violet-blue capsules banded with dark purple at one end, which, he said, had just been placed on the market and were intended not for neurotics whom a draft of water could calm if properly administered, but only for great sleepless artists who had to die for a few hours in order to live for centuries.” – 22

“Fat fate's formal handshake (...) brought me out of my torpor; and I wept. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury--I wept.” – 23

“And presently I was shaking hands with both of them in the street, the sloping street, and everything was whirling and flying before the approaching white deluge, and a truck with a mattress from Philadelphia was confidently rolling down to an empty house, and dust was running and writhing over the exact slab of stone where Charlotte, when they lifted the laprobe for me, had been revealed, curled up, her eyes intact, their black lashes still wet, matted, like yours, Lolita.” – 24

“Oh Lolita, you are my girl, as Vee was Poe's and Bea Dante's, and what little girl would not like to whirl in a circular skirt and scanties? Did I have something special in mind? coaxing voices asked me. Swimming suits? We have them in all shades. Dream pink, frosted aqua, glans mauve, tulip red, oolala black. What about playsuits? Slips? No slips. Lo and I loathed slips.” – 25

“There was a double bed, a mirror, a double bed in the mirror, a closet door with mirror, a bathroom door ditto, a blue-dark window, a reflected bed there, the same in the closet mirror, two chairs, a glass-topped table, two bedtables, a double bed: a big panel bed, to be exact, with a Tuscan rose chenille spread, and two frilled, pink-shaded nightlamps, left and right.” – 27

“"If I tell you--if I tell you, will you promise [sleepy, so sleepy--head lolling, eyes going out], promise you won't make complaints?"
"Later, Lo. Now go to bed. I'll leave you here, and you go to bed. Give you ten minutes."
"Oh, I've been such a disgusting girl," she went on, shaking her hair, removing with slow fingers a velvet hair ribbon. "Lemme tell you--"
"Tomorrow, Lo. Go to bed, go to bed--for goodness sake, to bed."” – 27

“I should have understood that Lolita had already proved to be something quite different from innocent Annabel, and that the nymphean evil breathing through every pore of the fey child that I had prepared for my secret delectation, would make the secrecy impossible, and the delectation lethal. I should have known (by the signs made to me by something in Lolita--the real child Lolita or some haggard angel behind her back) that nothing but pain and horror would result from the expected rapture. Oh, winged gentlemen of the jury!
And she was mine, she was mine, the key was in my fist, my fist was in my pocket, she was mine.” – 28

“Naked, except for one sock and her charm bracelet, spread-eagled on the bed where my philter had felled her--so I foreglimpsed her; a velvet hair ribbon was still clutched in her hand; her honey-brown body, with the white negative image of a rudimentary swimsuit patterned against her tan, presented to me its pale breastbuds; in the rosy lamplight, a little pubic floss glistened on its plump hillock.” – 28

“"Where the devil did you get her?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said: the weather is getting better."
"Seems so."
"Who's the lassie?"
"My daughter."
"You lie--she's not."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said: July was hot. Where's her mother?"
"Dead."” – 28

“There would have been a fire opal dissolving within a ripple-ringed pool, a last throb, a last dab of color, stinging red, smearing pink, a sigh, a wincing child.” – 30

“I am trying to describe these things not to relive them in my present boundless misery, but to sort out the portion of hell and the portion of heaven in that strange, awful, maddening world--nymphet love. The beastly and beautiful merged at one point, and it is that borderline I would like to fix, and I feel I fail to do so utterly.” – 31

“Nothing could have been more childish than her snubbed nose, freckled face or the purplish spot on her naked neck where a fairytale vampire had feasted, or the unconscious movement of her tongue exploring a touch of rosy rash around her swollen lips; nothing could be more harmless than to read about Jill, an energetic starlet who made her own clothes and was a student of serious literature; nothing could be more innocent than the part in that glossy brown hair with that silky sheen on the temple; nothing could be more naive--But what sickening envy the lecherous fellow whoever he was--come to think of it, he resembled a little my Swiss uncle Gustave, also a great admirer of le dècouvert--would have experienced had he known that every nerve in me was still anointed and ringed with the feel of her body--the body of some immortal demon disguised as a female child.” – 32

“And I was such a thoughtful friend, such a passionate father, such a good pediatrician, attending to all the wants of my little auburn brunette's body! My only grudge against nature was that I could not turn my Lolita inside out and apply voracious lips to her young matrix, her unknown heart, her nacreous liver, the sea-grapes of her lungs, her comely twin kidneys.” – part 2, 2

“I held her by her knobby wrist and she kept turning and twisting it this way and that, surreptitiously trying to find a weak point so as to wrench herself free at a favorable moment, but I held her quite hard and in fact hurt her rather badly for which I hope my heart may rot, and once or twice she jerked her arm so violently that I feared her wrist might snap, and all the while she stared at me with those unforgettable eyes where cold anger and hot tears struggled, and our voices were drowning the telephone, and when I grew aware of its ringing she instantly escaped.
With people in movies I seem to share the services of the machina telephonica and its sudden god.” – 14

“Downstairs the screen door banged. Lo? Escaped?
Through the casement on the stairs I saw a small impetuous ghost slip through the shrubs; a silvery dot in the dark--hub of the bicycle wheel--moved, shivered, and she was gone.
(… ) I had no other alternative than to pursue on foot the winged fugitive. Even now, after more than three years have heaved and elapsed, I cannot visualize that spring-night street, that already so leafy street, without a gasp of panic.” – 14

“Lo was waiting for me near the ghostly birch tree.
"I am drenched," she declared at the top of her voice. "Are you glad? To hell with the play! See what I mean?"
An invisible hag's claw slammed down an upper-floor window.
In our hallway, ablaze with welcoming lights, my Lolita peeled off her sweater, shook her gemmed hair, stretched towards me two bare arms, raised one knee:
"Carry me upstairs, please. I feel sort of romantic tonight."
It may interest physiologists to learn, at this point, that I have the ability--a most singular case, I presume--of shedding torrents of tears throughout the other tempest. – 14

“I pushed her softness back into the room and went in after her. I ripped her shirt off. I unzipped the rest of her, I tore off her sandals. Wildly, I pursued the shadow of her infidelity; but the scent I traveled upon was so slight as to be practically undistinguishable from a madman's fancy.” – 16

“O lente currite noctis equi! O softly run, nightmares!” – 18

“I felt I could rest from the nightmare of unknown betrayals within the innocence of her style, of her soul, of her essential grace.” – 20

“she melted into winsome merriment, my golden pet.” – 20

“Lolita ill. Lolita dying. Her skin was scalding hot! (...) Hysterical little nymphs might, I knew, run up all kinds of temperature--even exceeding a fatal count. And I would have given her a sip of hot spiced wine, and two aspirins, and kissed the fever away, if, upon an examination of her lovely uvula, one of the gems of her body, I had not seen that it was a burning red. I undressed her. Her breath was bittersweet. Her brown rose tasted of blood. She was shaking from head to toe. She complained of a painful stiffness in the upper vertebrae(...)” – 22

-It's a quotation. A motto... "Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici." "By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe." Latin.
-Hmmm. I suppose you have, sort of. You can do whatever you want, can't you? I suppose that's conquering the universe. Doing what you want. This place is the only universe I've got at the moment.
-Does that bother you?
-No. Yes. Oh, I dunno. It's just that I keep thinking I should try to help you, the way you're helping me. I mean, that's the deal, isn't it?
-No deals, Evey. Not unless you want them.
-I..I think I do. I mean, part of me just wants to stay in here forever and never have to go outside and face what's going on... But that's not right, is it? That's not taking responsibility for myself, like what you said. I want to help you, V. I want to do something. I won't get in the way, I promise. Can I, V? Can we make a deal? -p.43

-I am not loved, I know that. Not in soul or body. I have never known the soft whisper of endearment. Never known the peace that lies between the thighs of woman. But I am respected. I am feared. And that will suffice. Because I love. I, who am not loved in return. I have a love that is far deeper than the empty gasps and convulsions of brutish coupling.
Shall I speak of her?
Shall I speak of my bride?
She has no eyes to flirt or promise. But she sees all. Sees and understands with a wisdom that is godlike in its scale. I stand at the gates of her intellect and I am blinded by the light within. How stupid I must seem to her. How childlike and uncomprehending. Her soul is clean, untainted by the snares and ambiguities of emotion. She does not hate she does not yearn. She is untouched by joy or sorrow. I worship her though I am not worthy. I cherish the purity of her disdain. She does not respect me. She does not fear me. She does not love me. They think she is hard and cold, those who do not know her. They think she is lifeless and without passion. They do not know her. She has not touched them. She touched me, and I am touched by God, by Destiny, the whole of existence courses through her. I worship her. I am her slave. No freedom ever was so sweet. -p.38

"Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear, o clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of fire... I will not cease from mental fight... Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand(...)" -p.48

"Those rich and mysterious forces that sir in the shadowy depths of the human soul... Those inexpressible longings... When their is come they shall not be denied." -p.50

"Help us to be worthy of thy mercy, as we were when thou didst turn aside thy wrath... That wrath which did rain fire from the heavens. Help us to resist the temptations of the evil one... Who is surely come amongst us in this, the hour of our greatest trial. For I have seen a vision... A vision of dark and satanic evil that cometh forth from the night to ensnare the weak and the sinful... An avatar of damnation, who will seek to sully thy truth with his vain lies and shallow sophistications. Thou who art our fate an our final destiny... Help us to clearly perceive thy will. Help us to perceive the wiles of the evil one and stand firm in thee. One race, one nation, united in thy love. This we ask in the name of the father... And of the son... And of the holy ghost."
-Amen. Take your dress off, please. -p.52/53

-...Was like hell. Men burning... Choking in the yellow fog... ...And I saw a black shape against the flames. A man. Oh God, who are you? Who are you really?
-I am the devil, and I come to do the devil's work. -p.55

"Let's dig an enormous castle!" cried Moon-face. "Then we can all sit on the top of it when the sea comes in."
"We can't," said Silky, suddenly looking sad.
"Why not? Why not?" cried Jo in surprise. "Isn't this The Land of Do-As-You-Please?"
"Yes," said Silky. "But it's time we went back to the Faraway Tree. This land will soon be moving on-- and nice as it is, we don't want to live here forever."
"Gracious no," said Jo. "Our Mother and Father couldn't possibly do without us..." -p.68

"Men screaming. I hate that. I hate the sound of men screaming." -p.82

"The water-colour in the flooded gallery. There's a girl who'll push but will not shove and she's desperate for her father's love. She believes the hand beneath the glove may be one she needs to hold. Though she doubts her host's moralities she decides that she is more at ease in the land of doing-as-you-please, than outside in the cold.
But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast get eaten by the play. There's a murderer at the matinee. There are dead men in the aisles. And the patrons and the actors too are uncertain if the show is through, and with sidelong looks await their cue... ...But the frozen mask just smiles." -p.91/92

-You've gone, Derek. I never liked you. I was afraid of you. I loved you. You've gone beyond the veil...
Me too. -p.101

-And the same pictures play over and over. And I'm in the back row, watching them... ...in the grubby, broken cinema of memory. I'll go back into the corners of the past, even the shadowy, sordid corners... Just because you were there then. I'm trying to hang on. Hang on to something even though I know it's gone. Even though I know you aren't there anymore. You. The loved one. You're gone. Nothing will change that. All I can do is pack away all the things I remember, put them in a drawer with all other useless souvenirs... And just carry on.
You've got to carry on. We've all got to just carry on. That's how we survive. That's our purpose. -p.104/105

-Good. You're almost there. Go closer. Feel the shape of it. Your mother died. They took your father away. There's a little girl, Evey, and she's screaming...
-A-huh... Aa-huhh... Oh, make it stop .. Mummy, Daddy, please make it stop!! What... Are you doing to me? Oh, I can't..breathe..auhuhh...
-You were in a cell, Evey. They offered you a choice between the death of your principles and the death of your body.
-Oh. Oh, I can feel it... Oh what is it... Oh, I'm going to die, I'm going to burst...
-You said you'd rather die. You faced the fear of your own death, and you were calm and still. Try to feel now what you felt then...
-I...Uhhh...Oh God... I felt... Huhhh... I...felt...like...an angel... Oh god, V. Oh god, I'm so scared, I'm so cold... What's happening to me?
-The door of the cage is open, Evey. All that you feel is the wind from outside. Don't be afraid. Try to stand. Try to walk.(...)
-I don't want...to be blindfolded...
-No, Evey. No more blindfolds. All the blindfolds are gone. -p.170/171

-Everything is connected. You must understand that knowledge is not all your heritage. It includes also courage and belief, like hers that we commemorate herein... ...And romance. Always, always romance. 'Midst insurrection's clamour, we may easily forget just what it is for which we strive... Isn't it dancing? Scented shoulders? Pupils widened by desire or wine? Anarchy must embrace the din of bombs and cannon-fire... "...Yet always must it love sweet music more." -p.218/219

"HE AWOKE--and wanted Mars."

"I was thinking about the two of us together, and then about myself again. I was at that age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me. And worse, I was in love. Love with complications." -p.6

"You could lean over the edge and peer down to see nothing. All I knew about the well was its frightening depth. It was deep beyond measuring, and crammed full of darkness, as if all the world's darknesses had been boiled down to their ultimate density." -p.8

" "The best thing would be to break your neck, but you'd probably just break your leg and then you couldn't do a thing. You'd yell at the top of your lungs, but nobody would hear you, and you couldn't expect anyone to find you, and you'd have centipedes and spiders crawling all over you, and the bones of the ones who died before are scattered all around you, and it's dark and soggy, and high overhead there's this tiny, tiny circle of light like a winter moon. You die there in this place, little by little, all by yourself."
"Yuck, just thinking about it makes my flesh creep," I said. "Somebody should find the thing and build a wall around it."
"But nobody can find it. So make sure you don't go off the path."
"Don't worry, I won't."
"Don't you worry," she said. "You'll be OK. You could go running all around here in the middle of the night and you'd never fall into the well. And as long as I stick with you, I won't fall in, either." " -p.9

" "I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?"
"Always," I said. "I'll always remember." " -p.12

"Now, though, I realize that all I can place in the imperfect vessel of writing are imperfect memories and imperfect thoughts. The more the memories of Naoko inside me fade, the more deeply I am able to understand her." -p.13

"Death exists - in a paperweight, in four red and white balls on a pool table - and we go on living and breathing it into our lungs like fine dust. (...) Stuck inside this suffocating contradiction, I went on endlessly spinning in circles. Those were strange days, now that I look back at them. In the midst of life, everything revolved around death." -p.31

"At 18 my favourite book was The Great Gatsby. (...) I would pull it off the shelf when the mood hit me and read a section at random. It never once disappointed me. (...) I wanted to tell people what a wonderful novel it was(...)." -p.37|38

" "(...)Haven't you noticed, Watanabe? You and I are the only real ones in this dorm. The other guys are crap."
This took me off guard. "How can you say that?"
"'Cause it's true. I know. I can see it. It's like we have marks on our foreheads. And besides, we've both read The Great Gatsby." " -p.38

"Even I would be moved by his kindness at times, but he could just as well be malicious and cruel." -p.39

"When I told him I had slept with only one, he said, "Oh, we can fix that, easy. Come with me next time. I'll get you one easy as that."
I didn't believe him, but he turned out to be right. It was easy. (...) We (...) found a pair of girls (the world was full of pairs of girls), talked to them, drank, went to a hotel, and had sex with them. He was a great talker. (...) girls would get carried away listening to him (...) and end up sleeping with him. I guess they enjoyed being with somebody so nice and handsome and clever. (...) Not that he was dying to sleep with the girls he found: it was just a game to him." -p.41

"Hatsumi had a pretty good idea that Nagasawa was sleeping around, but she never complained to him. She was seriously in love, but she never made demands.
"I don't deserve a girl like Hatsumi," Nagasawa once said to me. I had to agree with him." -p.43

"I felt as if the only thing that made sense, whether for Naoko or for me, was to keep going back and forth between 18 and 19. After 18 would come 19, and after 19, 18, of course. But she turned 20. And in the autumn, I would do the same. Only the dead stay 17 for ever." -p.45

"Her arms tightened around me at the end, when at last she broke her silence. Her cry was the saddest sound of orgasm I had ever heard." -p.49

"What a joke. The wind changes direction a little, and their cries become whispers." -p.59

"I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it - to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once." -p.92

"So I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally 365 days a year. I was still in primary school at the time, but I made up my mind once and for all." -p.92

" "Waiting for the perfect love?"
"No, even I know better than that. I'm looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortbread. And you stop everything you're doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortbread out to me. And I say I don't want it any more and throw it out of the window. That's what I'm looking for." " -p.93

"There was something almost mysterious about this woman. Her face had lots of wrinkles. These were the first thing to catch your eye, but they didn't make her look old. Instead, they emphasized a certain youthfulness in her that transcended age. The wrinkles belonged where they were, as if they had been part of her face since birth. When she smiled, the wrinkles smiled with her; when she frowned, the wrinkles frowned, too. And when she was neither smiling nor frowning, the wrinkles lay scattered over her face in a strangely warm, ironic way." -p.113

"Beneath that moonlight, all sounds bore a strange reverberation. The hollow sound of my own footsteps seemed to come from another direction as though I were hearing someone walking on the bottom of the sea. Behind me, every now and then, I would hear a crack or a rustle. A heavy pall hung over the forest, as if the animals of the night were holding their breath, waiting for me to pass." -p.137

" "I thought that as long as I was with him, I would be all right," she went on. "As long as I was with him, my troubles would stay away. (...) If I put myself in this person's hands, I'll be OK. If my condition starts to worsen even the slightest bit - if a screw comes loose - he'll notice straight away, and with tremendous care and patience he'll fix it, he'll tighten the screw again, put all the jumbled threads back in place. If we have that sense of trust, our sickness stays away. No more snap! I was so happy! Life was great!(...)" -p.145

" "(...)He brought me some oranges and mumbled all this stuff I couldn't understand, and he peeled an orange for me and mumbled more stuff and he was out of there. He said he had a thing about hospitals."
Naoko laughed. "He was always a kid about that kind of stuff. I mean, nobody likes hospitals, right? That's why people visit people in hospitals to make them feel better, and perk up their spirits and stuff. But Kizuki just didn't get it."
"He wasn't so bad when the two of us came to see you, though. He was just his usual self."
"Because you were there," said Naoko. "He was always like that around you. He struggled to keep his weaknesses hidden. I'm sure he was very fond of you. He made a point of letting you see only his best side. He wasn't like that with me. He'd let his guard down. He could be really moody. One minute he'd be chattering away, and the next he'd be depressed.(...)He did keep trying to change himself, to improve himself, though." " -p.153

"Tiny diagrammatic shapes seemed to float in the darkness when I closed my eyes, and my ears sensed the lingering reverberation of Reiko's guitar, but neither of these lasted for long. Sleep came and carried me into a mass of warm mud. I dreamed of willows. Both sides of a mountain road were lined with willows." -p.157

"So perfect was Naoko's physical beauty now that it aroused nothing sexual in me. I could only stare, astounded, at the lovely curve from waist to hips, the rounded richness of the breasts, the gentle movement with each breath of the slim belly and the soft, black pubic shadow beneath." -p.160

" "You're letting yourself be scared by too many things," I said. "The dark, bad dreams, the power of the dead. You have to forget them. I'm sure you'll get well if you do."
"If I can," said Naoko, shaking her head.
"If you can get out of this place, will you live with me?" I asked. "Then I can protect you from the dark and from bad dreams.(...)"
Naoko pressed still more firmly against me. "That would be wonderful," she said." -p.176

" "Really? I can hardly wait. Let's go to a real S&M one, with whips and, like, they make the girl pee in front of everyone. That's my favourite."
"We'll do it."
"You know what I like best about porn cinemas?"
"I couldn't begin to guess."
"Whenever a sex scene starts, you can hear this "Gulp!' sound when everybody swallows all at once," said Midori. "I love that "Gulp!' It's so sweet!" " -p.221

" "Wow, that's some short skirt you're wearing!"
"Nice, huh?"
"What do you do on stairways?" the doctor asked.
"Nothing special. I let it all hang out," said Midori. The nurse chuckled behind the doctor.
"Incredible. You ought to come and let us open your head one of these days to see what's going on in there. Do me a favour and use the lifts while you're in the hospital. I can't afford to have any more patients.(...)" -p.222

"How many Sundays - how many hundreds of Sundays like this - lay ahead of me?
"Quiet, peaceful, and lonely," I said aloud to myself." -p.238

"She had been an absolutely special woman. Someone should have done something - anything - to save her. It was Nagasawa, of course, who told me what had happened. His letter from Bonn said this: "Hatsumi's death has extinguished something. This is unbearably sad and painful, even to me." I ripped his letter to shreds and threw it away. I never wrote to him again." -p.253

"Midori's eyes were glued to the screen. I was impressed: anyone watching a film with such fierce intensity was getting more than her money's worth. She kept reporting her thoughts to me: "Oh my God, will you look at that!" or "Three guys at once! They're going to tear her apart!" or "I'd like to try that on somebody, Watanabe." I was enjoying Midori a lot more than the film." -p.268

"What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for - and to do it so unconsciously." -p.290

"If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark" -p.309

"(...)a place where I lived with the dead. There Naoko lived, and I could speak with her and hold her in my arms. Death in that place was not a decisive element that brought life to an end. There, death was but one of many elements comprising life. There Naoko lived with death inside her. And to me she said, "Don't worry, it's only death. Don't let it bother you." I felt no sadness in that strange place." -p.326

"They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. (...) It was sharply different from the West, where an evening was hurried from phase to phase towards its close, in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself." -p.19

"He paused. 'I see you're looking at my cuff buttons.'
I hadn't been looking at them, but I did now. They were composed of oddly familiar pieces of ivory.
'Finest specimens of human molars,' he informed me.
'Well!' I inspected them. 'That's a very interesting idea.'" -p.78

"But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the washstand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor." -p.105

"'These things excite me so,' she whispered. 'If you want to kiss me any time during the evening, Nick, just let me know and I'll be glad to arrange it for you. Just mention my name. Or present a green card. I'm giving out green -'
'Look around,' suggested Gatsby.
'I'm looking around. I'm having a marvellous -'
'You must see the faces of many people you've heard about.'" -p.111

"(...)I have a sharp physical memory that, in the course of it, my underwear kept climbing like a damp snake around my legs and intermittent beads of sweat raced cool across my back." -p.132

"'(...)And he stayed three weeks, until Daddy told him he had to get out. The day after he left Daddy died.' After a moment she added. 'There wasn't any connexion.'" -p.134

"I glanced at Daisy, who was staring terrified between Gatsby and her husband, and at Jordan, who had begun to balance an invisible but absorbing object on the tip of her chin. Then I turned back to Gatsby - and was startled at his expression. He looked - and this is said in all contempt for the babbled slander of his garden - as if he had 'killed a man'. For a moment the set of his face could be described in just that fantastic way." -p.141

"As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face fell lazily against my coat's shoulder and the formidable stroke of thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand." -p.142