John

“the poverty gets to look like landscape if your car is running smoothly”
― Joseph McElroy, Women and Men

“And she knew she was his harmonic mean, his chess mate, his past, his walking memory, and in a language he liked even more than American (and to use the Shakespeare words he had just read but thought that she had not) his “ventricle of memory.”
― Joseph McElroy, Women and Men

“The runner is thinking of home. He thinks of the start of his favorite training run–the fartlek–two minutes on, one minute off. The mass of runners push and weave between each other like people funneling into the closing doors of a train. Towards the finish, he is usually the only person running, and there is nothing ahead of him but road, and it feels a little like communicating with God.”
― Anelise Chen, So Many Olympic Exertions

“What is the use of crossing the sea, invading a country, winning a war, and crowning one's brow with the victor's laurel, if afterwards one cannot comport oneself properly at a table? What kind of heroes were these Americans, who ate corn in the manner of hens?”
― Curzio Malaparte, The Skin