Soph

“After we had drunk the sherry I bought cider for us, and we were a little tipsy as we swayed on the high stools and looked out at the rain as it fell on the fields that shot past the train. But being tipsy we did not see very much and the rain did not touch us.”
― Edna O'Brien

“My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead. Women almost never become art monsters because art monsters only concern themselves with art, never mundane things. Nabokov didn't even fold his own umbrella. Vera licked his stamps for him.”
― Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation

“Okay, I said, what’s so hot about playing the piano?
She told me that the most important thing was to establish the tenderness right off the bat, or at least close to the top of the piece, just a hint of it, a whisper, but a deep whisper because the tension will mount, the excitement and the drama will build—I was writing it down as fast as I could—and when the action rises the audience might remember the earlier moment of tenderness, and remembering will make them long to return to infancy, to safety, to pure love, then you might move away from that, put the violence and agony of life into every note, building, building still, until there is an important decision to make: return to tenderness, even briefly, glancingly, or continue on with the truth, the violence, the pain, the tragedy, to the very end.”
― Miriam Toews

“There is a terrific movie which gets shown a lot around Art cinemas, even though it’s a very old one, and I always try to see it if I can. It’s called The Scoundrel’, and it has Noël Coward in it as this great Wolf. At one point when his latest victim comes round and begs him on her knees to take her back, he removes the boutonnière from the lapel of his dinner-jacket and murmuring Forgive-me-my-dear-for-stooping-to-symbolism, he tosses the flower into his highball and drowns it with a squirt of the soda-syphon. So you know what I mean? That’s the sort of thing I brought myself up on. I mean that’s more like it.”
― Elaine Dundy