She read a great deal, and very soon realized how little chance she had of an interesting future.
“Life is full of little mercies like that, not big mercies but comfortable little mercies. And so we go on…”
― Summer and Smoke
― Summer and Smoke
“The night at the Casino—I wouldn’t have made love to you. Even if you had consented to go upstairs. I couldn’t have made love to you. Yes, yes! Isn’t that funny? I’m more afraid of your soul than you’re afraid of my body. You’d have been as safe as the angel of the fountain—because I wouldn’t feel decent enough—to touch you.…”
― Summer and Smoke
― Summer and Smoke
“If medical practitioners wanted to save lives,” said Baxter, “instead of making money out of them, they would unite to prevent diseases, not work separately to cure them.”
― Poor Things
― Poor Things
“I will answer that question by asking you one.—Have you ever seen, or looked at, a picture of a Gothic cathedral?... How everything reaches up, how everything seems to be straining for something out of the reach of stone—or human—fingers?—The immense stained windows, the great arched doors that are five or six times the height of the tallest man—the vaulted ceiling and all the delicate spires—all reaching up to something beyond attainment! To me—well, that is the secret, the principle back of existence—the everlasting struggle and aspiration for more than our human limits have placed in our reach.—Who was it that said that—oh, so beautiful a thing!—“All of us are in the gutter”—but some of us are looking at the stars!”
― Summer and Smoke
― Summer and Smoke
“That’s your mistake. You think you’re stuffed with rose leaves? Turn around and look at it, it may do you good!... Now listen here to the anatomy lecture! This upper story’s the brain, which is hungry for something called truth and doesn’t get much but keeps on feeling hungry! This middle’s the belly which is hungry for food. This part down here is the sex which is hungry for love because it is sometimes lonesome. I’ve fed all three, as much of all three as I could, or as much as I wanted.—You’ve fed none—nothing. Well—maybe your belly a little—watery subsistence—but love or truth, nothing but—nothing but hand-me-down notions!—attitudes—poses! Now you can go.”
― Summer and Smoke
― Summer and Smoke
jo’s 2025 Year in Books
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