Literary Reference Quotes

“The question is which one of us is the frog and which is the toad,' Willem had said after they'd first seen the show, in JB's studio, and read the kindhearted books to each other late that night, laughing helplessly as they did.

He'd smiled; they had been lying in bed. 'Obviously, I'm the toad,' he said.

'No,' Willem said, 'I think you're the frog; your eyes are the same color as his skin.'

Willem sounded so serious that he grinned. 'That's your evidence?' he asked. 'And so what do you have in common with the toad?'

'I think I actually have a jacket like the one he has,' Willem said, and they began laughing again.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“The photo had been taken at the opening of JB's fifth, long-delayed show, 'Frog and Toad,' which had been exclusively images of the two of them, but very blurred, and more abstract than JB's previous work. (They hadn't quite known what to think of the series title, though JB had claimed it was affectionate. 'Arnold Lobel?' he had screeched at them when they asked him about it. 'Hello?!' But neither he nor Willem had read Lobel's books as children, and they'd had to go out and buy them to make sense of the reference.)”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“So,' I said, partly to Magda, partly to myself, 'Rema left Argentina with this An-a-to-le person.' I adopted the four-syllable pronunciation with confidence, feeling myself an Hercule Poirot: it was near the end of the story, the suspects were in the room.”
― Rivka Galchen, Atmospheric Disturbances

“I remember the book I was reading. Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector. I remember because there were so many things in Hour of the Star with which I found kinship that I'd brought along a stub of pencil in case I urgently needed to underline.”
― Sara Baume, A Line Made By Walking