Barbara

“Her mind seemed to have no room for anything but the crowded eventlessness of her everyday life.”
― Amitav Ghosh, The Glass Palace

“What do Americans know about morality? They don’t want their presidents to have penises but they don’t mind if their presidents covertly arrange to support the Nicaraguan rebel forces after Congress has restricted such aid; they don’t want their presidents to deceive their wives but they don’t mind if their presidents deceive Congress—lie to the people and violate the people’s constitution!”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Behold your future, Cavendish the Younger. You will not apply for membership, but the tribe of the elderly will claim you. Your present will not keep pace with the world’s. This slippage will stretch your skin, sag your skeleton, erode your hair and memory, make your skin turn opaque so your twitching organs and blue-cheese veins will be semivisible. You will venture out only in daylight, avoiding weekends and school holidays. Language, too, will leave you behind, betraying your tribal affiliations whenever you speak. On escalators, on trunk roads, in supermarket aisles, the living will overtake you, incessantly. Elegant women will not see you. Store detectives will not see you. Salespeople will not see you, unless they sell stair lifts or fraudulent insurance policies. Only babies, cats, and drug addicts will acknowledge your existence. So do not fritter away your days. Sooner than you fear, you will stand before a mirror in a care home, look at your body, and think, E.T., locked in a ruddy cupboard for a fortnight.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Back at his apartment after ten hours in the computer lab, Adam turns on the TV. Oil wars and sectarian violence. It’s way too early to think about sleeping, though that’s all he wants to do. He’s still a score of stories up in the air, held aloft by a nonexistent tree, listening to the creak of that high house and the calls of birds he’d like to be able to name. He tries to read a novel, something about privileged people having trouble getting along with each other in exotic locations. He throws it against the wall. Something has broken in him. His appetite for human self-regard is dead.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory