“Nobody moved.
Everybody sat in the dark cellar, suspended in the suddenly frozen task of this October game; the wind blew outside, banging the house, the smell of pumpkins and apples filled the room with smell of the objects in their fingers while one boy cried, “I'll go upstairs and look!” and he ran upstairs hopefully and out around the house, four times around the house, calling, “Marion, Marion, Marion!” over and over and at last coming slowly down the stairs into the waiting breathing cellar and saying to the darkness, “I can't find her.”
Then... some idiot turned on the lights.
("The October Game")”
― Long After Midnight
Everybody sat in the dark cellar, suspended in the suddenly frozen task of this October game; the wind blew outside, banging the house, the smell of pumpkins and apples filled the room with smell of the objects in their fingers while one boy cried, “I'll go upstairs and look!” and he ran upstairs hopefully and out around the house, four times around the house, calling, “Marion, Marion, Marion!” over and over and at last coming slowly down the stairs into the waiting breathing cellar and saying to the darkness, “I can't find her.”
Then... some idiot turned on the lights.
("The October Game")”
― Long After Midnight
“You'll find another.'
God! Banish the thought. Why don't you tell me that 'if the girl had been worth having she'd have waited for you'? No, sir, the girl really worth having won't wait for anybody.”
― This Side of Paradise
God! Banish the thought. Why don't you tell me that 'if the girl had been worth having she'd have waited for you'? No, sir, the girl really worth having won't wait for anybody.”
― This Side of Paradise
“…There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad.”
― The Iliad
― The Iliad
“Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us.”
― The Goldfinch
― The Goldfinch
“I'm not sentimental--I'm as romantic as you are. The idea, you know,
is that the sentimental person thinks things will last--the romantic
person has a desperate confidence that they won't.”
― This Side of Paradise
is that the sentimental person thinks things will last--the romantic
person has a desperate confidence that they won't.”
― This Side of Paradise
Lauren’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Lauren’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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