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“Later he´ll be drunk in extremis and will only be able to speak the esperanto of alcoholics, which is a language full of stutterings from the geological layers of our animal ancestors”
― A Spy in the House of Love
― A Spy in the House of Love
“What I corrupted was what is called the truth in favour of a more marvelous world. I could always improve on the facts.
[...] in self-defense, I accuse the writers of fairy-tales. Not hunger, not cruelty, not my parents, but these tales which promised that sleeping in the snow never caused pneumonia, that bread never turned stale, that trees blossomed out of season, that dragons could be killed with courage, that intense wishing would be followed immediately by fulfillment of the wish. Intrepid wishing, said the fairytales, was more effective than labor. The smoke issuing from Aladdin's lamp was my first smokescreen, and the lies learned from fairytales were my first perjuries. Let us say I had perverted tendencies: I believed everything I read.”
― A Spy in the House of Love
[...] in self-defense, I accuse the writers of fairy-tales. Not hunger, not cruelty, not my parents, but these tales which promised that sleeping in the snow never caused pneumonia, that bread never turned stale, that trees blossomed out of season, that dragons could be killed with courage, that intense wishing would be followed immediately by fulfillment of the wish. Intrepid wishing, said the fairytales, was more effective than labor. The smoke issuing from Aladdin's lamp was my first smokescreen, and the lies learned from fairytales were my first perjuries. Let us say I had perverted tendencies: I believed everything I read.”
― A Spy in the House of Love
“Line up all the daughters in the world," Eddie said to the ambulance men. "You're never going to find a girl as good as this one.”
― Whistler
― Whistler
“You haven't loved yet," he said. "You've only been trying to love; beginning to love. Trust alone is not love, illusion is not love, desire alone is not love. All these were paths leading you out of yourself, it is true, and so you thought they led to another, but you never reached the other. You were only on the way.”
― A Spy in the House of Love
― A Spy in the House of Love
“It's a luxury to not know what happened to the people you were once in love with.”
― Whistler
― Whistler
Mena’s 2025 Year in Books
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