Brendan Walsleben

“I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.”
― Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist

“We knew the pain of winter wind rushing up your skirt, and the ache of keeping your knees together in class, and how drab and infuriating it was to jump rope while the boys played baseball. We could never understand why the girls cared so much about being mature, or why they felt compelled to compliment each other, but sometimes, after one of us had read a long portion of the diary out loud, we had to fight back the urge to hug one another or to tell each other how pretty we were. We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colors went together. We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn’t fathom them at all. We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

“Readin' don't never not done nothing for not nonebody. Never not no one, didn't about no reason not never. And by God they never not ain't gonna will!”
― Early Cuyler

“She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize and men never think about.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides