“Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. ”
― Middlesex
― Middlesex
“The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it.”
― The Bell Jar
― The Bell Jar
“There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.”
― The Bell Jar
― The Bell Jar
“For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”
― T. S. Eliot Reading: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Others
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”
― T. S. Eliot Reading: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Others
“She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.”
― Mrs. Dalloway
― Mrs. Dalloway
Susannah’s 2025 Year in Books
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