“You hate America, don't you?'
That would be as silly as loving it,' I said. 'It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. It's no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to a human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will.”
― Mother Night
That would be as silly as loving it,' I said. 'It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. It's no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to a human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will.”
― Mother Night
“Den Haag, das zu jener Zeit um die vierzigtausend Einwohner zählte, nennt Diderot das schönste Dorf auf der Erde und den Weg von der Stadt an den Strand von Scheveningen hinaus eine Promenade, die nirgendwo sonst ihresgleichen habe. Es war nicht leicht, diese Ansichten nachzuvollziehen, als ich selber die Parkstraat entlang in Richtung Scheveningen wanderte. Hier und da stand eine schöne Villa in einem Garten, aber sonst gab es kaum etwas, das mich aufatmen ließ. Wahrscheinlich war ich, wie schon so oft in fremden Städten, auf den falschen Wegen gegangen.”
― The Rings of Saturn
― The Rings of Saturn
“Ist die Literatur vielleicht ein Bär, der seine Pfote leckt, ein bleierner Schlaf nach getaner Pflicht, auf dem Diwan des Arbeitszimmers?”
― Das Rauschen der Zeit: Gesammelte autobiographische Prosa der 20er Jahre
― Das Rauschen der Zeit: Gesammelte autobiographische Prosa der 20er Jahre
“Ich habe nie begreifen können, warum gerade diejenigen Männer, die der Frau am energischsten den Verstand absprechen, ihr am eifrigsten die Erziehung der Kinder aufhalsen.”
― Die Antifeministen: Ein Buch der Verteidigung
― Die Antifeministen: Ein Buch der Verteidigung
“It is to be regretted that no mental method of daguerreotype or photography has yet been discovered by which the characters of men can be reduced to writing and put into grammatical language with an unerring precision of truthful description. How often does the novelist feel, ay, and the historian also and the biographer, that he has conceived within his mind and accurately depicted on the tablet of his brain the full character and personage of man, and that nevertheless, when he flies to pen and ink to perpetuate the portrait, his words forsake, elude, disappoint, and play the deuce with him, till at the end of a dozen pages the man described has no more resemblance to the man conceived than the signboard at the coner of the street has to the Duke of Cambridge?”
― Barchester Towers
― Barchester Towers
Mary’s 2025 Year in Books
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