172 books
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102 voters
“I wanted her body and soul, but body first.”
― The Valley of Unknowing
― The Valley of Unknowing
“All writers are insecure, the male ones especially. It's well known. Why else would they spend so much time on make-believe? They're only happy in their imaginary worlds, because that's where they're in charge - where they're God. Did you know that Hemingway's mother dressed him as a girl until he was six years old?"
I was not offended by Claudia's glib psychological theory. Like many glib psychological theories, it struck me as fundamentally correct.”
― The Valley of Unknowing
I was not offended by Claudia's glib psychological theory. Like many glib psychological theories, it struck me as fundamentally correct.”
― The Valley of Unknowing
“Desire is an appetite, quickly sated. Longing is a wound, an opening in the heart or the spirit. Whatever the cause, whatever the duration, it almost always leaves a scar.”
― The Valley of Unknowing
― The Valley of Unknowing
“The railway was part scalpel, part movie camera, slicing the city open, parading its inner workings at fifty frames per second. It was on the S-Bahn that she felt least abandoned, as if the act of travelling turned back the clock, and brought her nearer to the future she had lost.”
― The Einstein Girl
― The Einstein Girl
“And then they would watch her closely as the dark, coagulated masses took form before her eyes, became flesh and bone, became gradually human. For all their show of reluctance, she had a sense that they enjoyed introducing her to these horrors, as seducers took pleasure in the corruption of innocence.”
― The Einstein Girl
― The Einstein Girl
Francis’s 2025 Year in Books
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