Leah W

“What a sad paradox, though Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze the path into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.”
― Roberto Bolaño, 2666

“In most couples there is the person who wins and the person who doesn’t. The winner isn’t necessarily stronger or smarter or righter. The winner is the person who won’t give up, and the non-winner (“loser” is not the correct word for the person who does not win), at a certain point, realizes the battle is a silly one, and the spoils are not worth the extended warfare.”
― Heidi Julavits, The Folded Clock: A Diary

“I have seen purer liquors, better seagars, finer tobacco, truer guns and pistols, larger dirks and bowie knives, and prettier courtezans here, than in any other place I have ever visited; and it is my unbiased opinion that California can and does furnish the best bad things that are obtainable in America.”
― David Wondrich, Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar

“Those who lament the dissolution of the American family-kids with no way to get to Girl Scouts, aging parents put into nursing homes-should remember what it was that kept the American family together: women's blood.”
― Joan Acocella