Gittel

“I remember walking in art galleries, through the nineteenth century: the obsession they had then with harems. Dozens of paintings of harems, fat women lolling on divans, turbans on their heads or velvet caps, being fanned with peacock tails, a eunuch in the background standing guard. Studies of sedentary flesh, painted by men who'd never been there. These pictures were supposed to be erotic, and I thought they were, at the time; but I see now what they were really about. They were paintings about suspended animation; about waiting, about objects not in use. They were paintings about boredom. But maybe boredom is erotic, when women do it, for men.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

“I've read this same sentence about twenty times since you came in."
Anybody else except Ackley would've taken the goddamn hint. Not him though...
"What the hellya reading?"
"Goddamn book."
He shoved my book back with his hand so that he could see the name on it. "Any good?" he said.
"This sentence I'm reading is terrific.”
― J. D. Salinger