Status Updates From Stop-Time

finished: 20) Unambiguous Events

The escaped siblings returning home

Page 278
"Nothing had changed except myself."
Pages 281+282
"But she re-entered reality a different person from the one who had left."

finished: 18) Elsinore, 1953 (Pages 250-272)
finished: 19) The Lock on the Metro Door

Page 262 - Mother's Letters
"Thousands of miles away from her, I discovered she unconsciously accepted her limitations, confining her written statements to a level of almost childish simplicity. She stated facts, nothing more. Her letters were peculiarly dead - dead with all the outward signs of life, like stillborn infants."

finished: 17) Going to Sea

Page 248 - trying to speak French & coming to a debatable conclusion >:)

"They laughed and didn't look up again. I moved away, filled with mysterious shame. But I'd found out what I wanted to know. French, which I'd failed three times in high school, was in fact a real language, spoken by real people. Europe existed."

finished: 16) Losing my Cherry

Page 230

"I read very fast, uncritically, and without retention, seeking only to escape from my own life through the imaginative plunge into another(...) It was around this time that I first thought of becoming a writer. In a cheap novel the hero was asked his profession at a cocktail party. "I'm a novelist" he said, and I remember putting the book down and thinking, my God what a beautiful thing to be able to say."

finished: 15) Hanging On

Sly fox :DD

finished: 14) License to Drive

finished: 13) Death by Itself

Page 200
"On the street, out of nowhere, desire swept me away. I wanted to live. I wanted to see something beautiful. Or to die. Anything definite, anything clear, visible and tangible, like dying, or saving someone's life, or being kissed by Jean Simmons."

finished: 12) Nights Away from Home

Page 186 - for the baby
"(...) Jessica was the only complete and uncomplicated love in my life, (....) that it was love and not lack of courage, forcing me to capitulate. Thus works the mind of a child, always a bit behind the world, swamped with emotion, and innocent of its own cunning."

finished: 11) Blindman's Buff

Page 170 - last ditch effort
"Within me a sadness had given way to hopelessness, when faith has evaporated and the imagination is dead, when life seems to have come finally and irrevocably to a standstill. (.....)"

Quotes - About Jean (the born yapper :D)

Page 167
"For an oral maniac the chance to pour word-magic into fresh and captive ears satisfies a need as deep as sex. His delight in himself was reborn."
(...)
He was always above his work, the secret possessor of an inner wealth untouched by the world --- his image of himself."

Quotes - About his Baby Sister

Page 154
"When she came home her utter helplessness shocked me into loving her. She seemed the quintessence of mortality."

Page 155
"Jessica simply existed, and no matter how hard I looked, that was all I ever knew. There seemed to be no point to her except the fact that she lived."

finished: 10) The Coldness of Public Places

Page 143
"I could not resist the clarity of the world of books, the incredibly satisfying way in which life became weighty and accessible. Books were reality. I hadn't made up my mind about my own life, a vague, dreamy affair, amorphous and dimly perceived, without beginning or end."

finished: 9) Falling

THIS IS WHY THESE "do you know where your kids are" COMMERCIALS WERE MADE

Page 134
"But after being robbed a couple of times I gave up crossing the park. Luckily I wasn't beaten up. I always seemed able to talk my way out of it. In those days the police ignored children and I saw bad beatings administered a stone's throw from the precinct house. The park was dangerous for a kid on his own."

finished: 8) a Yo-Yo Going Down, a Mad Squirrel Coming Up

Page 121 - about growing up skinny/not working out

"Success wouldve made me another person, or an actor hiding the past. And I wouldn't succeed, I would fail. Failure was dangerous, threatening my only reliable source of strength, my pride. I was proud, and God knows why. I had no reason to be. I'd picked it up somewhere, and it held me together. Better simply to live in my absurd body and not think about it."