Katherine

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Katherine is Currently Reading

Katherine is currently reading

Lucy Carmichael

by Margaret Kennedy

bookshelves: currently-reading, england

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Oct 17, 2026 02:41AM

Katherine is currently reading

City of Intellect: The Uses and Abuses of the University

by Nicholas B. Dirks

bookshelves: currently-reading, read-for-work

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May 05, 2024 05:04PM

“It seemed to me that I, rather than he, had brought this about, and my despair was extreme. For now that I knew that I loved him, it was his whole life that I loved. And I would never know that life. Changes would no doubt take place, and I would not even know what they were. 'How is he?' I would long to ask. But there would be no one to ask. If I were to pass him in the corridor, or in the Library, I would have to smile like the stranger he wanted me to be. And if I wished to please him, I must simply go away. And his life, his life...would go on without me. And I would have no knowledge of it. And since I had apparently understood so little, I could not even blame him. I get things wrong, you see.”
― Anita Brookner, Look at Me

2 likes

“It is something—it can be everything-to have found a fellow bird with whom you can sit among the rafters while the drinking and boasting and reciting and fighting go on below; a fellow bird whom you can look after and find bugs and seeds for; one who will patch your bruises and straighten your ruffled feathers and mourn over your hurts when you accidentally fly into something you can’t handle.”
― Wallace Stegner, The Spectator Bird

9 likes

“She will burn bright until she goes out; she will go on standing on tiptoe until she falls.”
― Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety

tags: women-s-strength

4 likes

“He talked on lovingly, about his books, as I had never heard anyone talk before. The instant sense of companionship it gave me was like the warmth of a fire to someone grown accustomed to the lack of it, who is hardly conscious of the cold until it is over; I realized then how much I had been longing for a friend of this kind.

Here at last, walking by my side, was someone else who cared for books, and realized the excellence of being alive. It was wonderful. He was the first real comrade I had found.”
― E. Arnot Robertson, Cullum

tags: books

0 likes

“And even then, even at that moment, I did not have the courage to ask him where he lived, or to ask him what his phone number was, for it would have seemed an intrusion, an assumption that I had a right to know, that a future existed where it would be of use to know. I see, oh yes I see that my diffidence, my desire not to offend looks like enough to coldness, looks like enough to indifference, and perhaps I mean it to, but this is not what it feels like in my head. But I cannot get out and say, Where do you live, give me your number, ring me, can I ring you? In case I am not wanted. In case I am tedious. So I let him go, without a word about any other meeting, though he was the one thing I wanted to keep...”
― Margaret Drabble, The Millstone

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