Dina Khatib > Recent Status Updates

“I close my eyes and focus on that flash of memory. I can see bits and pieces of it in my mind. Like looking at an old photo that’s been damaged.”

“It’s on the tip of my tongue..
Finally, the word slides into my conscious mind. It had to wait until I wasn’t looking to sneak in.”

“My nights ended with the morning. It was a dreadful day. The rain beat down on my windows cheerlessly; it was dark in the room, it was overcast outside. My head ached and was spinning; fever was stealing its way through my limbs.”

“I love him, but that will pass, it must pass, it cannot but pass; it’s already passing, I can sense it… Who knows, perhaps it will even end today, because I hate him”

“Your hand is cold, mine is as hot as fire. How blind you are, Nastenka!”

“Listen, I swear to you that if ever I am in the position to marry, then you will certainly be the one to make me happy;”

“Your fantastic world will grow pale, your dreams will wither, die and scatter like yellow leaves from the trees…”

“And you ask yourself: Where are your dreams? And you shake your head and say: How quickly do the years fly by! And again you ask yourself: What have you done with your years? Where have you buried your best days? Did you live or not?”

“even dreams need to be replenished!”

“And in vain does the dreamer rake through his old dreams, as if they were ashes, searching in these ashes for at least some little spark, in order to fan it into flames, and with this rekindled fire warm his heart, which has grown cold, and resurrect in himself once again everything that he had held dear, that had touched his soul, that had made his blood boil, that had brought tears to his eyes”

“You are outgrowing your former ideals: they are being smashed to dust, to bits and pieces; and if there is no other life, then you must build it from these bits and pieces.”

“No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the other direction, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not.

“now she knew she wasn’t at all powerful, and she would live and die in a world of extreme violence against the innocent, and at most she could help only a few people.”

“He felt the old beat of pleasure inside his body, like watching a perfect goal, like the rustling movement of light through leaves, a phrase of music from the window of a passing car. Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything.”

“Internally he felt nothing. He was like a freezer item that had thawed too quickly on the outside and was melting everywhere, while the inside was still frozen solid.”

“There’s always been something inside her that men have wanted to dominate, and their desire for domination can look so much like attraction, even love.”

“For weeks now, she has had this feeling, the feeling of moving around inside the protective film, floating like mercury. The outside world touches against her outside skin, but not the other part of herself, inside.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, says Marianne. I don’t know why I can’t be like normal people.”

“Time softens out while he types, feeling slow and dilated while actually passing very rapidly, and more than once he’s looked up to find that hours have gone by.”

“But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief.”

“I’m getting really fond of the room in spite of the wall-paper. Perhaps BECAUSE of the wall-paper.

It dwells in my mind so!”

“John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no REASON to suffer, and that satisfies him.”

“John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.”

“to exchange, in other words, blocks of her extremely limited time on this earth for the human invention known as money.”

“with other people she seemed so independent and remote, but with Connell she was different, a different person. He was the only one who knew her like that.”

“literature moves him. One of his professors calls it ‘the pleasure of being touched by great art”.”

“Eventually she laughed, because she wasn’t totally without spirit, and it’s obviously was kind of funny, just how savagely he had humiliated her, and his inability to apologize or even admit he had done it.”

“She applies some lotion to her left arm and then, quietly, lies back down in the deckchair, face to the sun, and closes her eyes. Behind her eyelids waves of light move green and red.”

“He didn’t know what to say. He started telling her that he loved her. It just happened like drawing your hand back when you touch something hot.”

“He often makes blithe remarks about things he ‘wishes’… if he really wished for any of those things, Marianne knows, then they would happen. Connell always gets what he wants, and then feel sorry for himself when what he wants doesn’t make him happy.”