Erika

“One should never mistake pattern for meaning.”
― Iain Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata

“—if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don’t think, ‘oh, I love this picture because it’s universal.’ ‘I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.’ That’s not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“I prefer an interesting vice to a virtue that bores.”
― Molière

“Ordering drinks always floored me. I didn't know whisky from gin and
never managed to get anything I really liked the taste of. Buddy Willard and
the other college boys I knew were usually too poor to buy hard liquor or
they scorned drinking altogether. It's amazing how many college boys don't
drink or smoke. I seemed to know them all. The farthest Buddy Willard ever
went was buying us a bottle of Dubonnet, which he only did because he was
trying to prove he could be aesthetic in spite of being a medical student.
"I'll have a vodka," I said.
The man looked at me more closely. "With anything?"
"Just plain," I said. "I always have it plain."
I thought I might make a fool of myself by saying I'd have it with ice
or gin or anything. I'd seen a vodka ad once, just a glass full of vodka
standing in the middle of a snowdrift in a blue light, and the vodka looked
clear and pure as water, so I thought having vodka plain must be all right.
My dream was someday ordering a drink and finding out it tasted wonderful.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar