Winterborn

“I was reading a New Yorker online piece the other week by Roxanna Robinson, who always gives her first-year writing students at Hunter College Madame Bovary. And each year their reactions are predictably depressing. It’s a “cold” book, Flaubert doesn’t “like” his characters enough, Emma Bovary is “selfish”, she’s a “materialist” and, best of all, she’s a “bad mother”. One boy thinks that Rodolphe’s cowardly letter dismissing Emma is really cool (ie, applicable to his own life) until he is beaten up by the female students and backs down. In other words, these characters and their creator aren’t nice enough, they wouldn’t be my friends, they’re not enough like me and mine… It’s a world in which reading has been corrupted by the cliches of film and television – cliches of character as well as plot.”
― Julian Barnes

“Why do we romanticize the dead? Why can't we be honest about them? Especially moms. They're the most romanticized of anyone.

Moms are saints, angels by merely existing. NO ONE could possibly understand what it's like to be a mom. Men will never understand. Women with no children will never understand. No one buts moms know the hardship of motherhood, and we non-moms must heap nothing but praise upon moms because we lowly, pitiful non-moms are mere peasants compared to the goddesses we call mothers.”
― Jennette McCurdy, I'm Glad My Mom Died

“All men come to resemble their fathers. That isn’t a tragedy, but you need a hell of a sense of humour to handle it.”
― Philip Kerr, A Quiet Flame

“There exists, for everyone, a sentence - a series of words - that has the power to destroy you. Another sentence exists, another series of words, that could heal you. If you're lucky you will get the second, but you can be certain of getting the first.”
― Philip K. Dick, Valis