Dina Khatib > Recent Status Updates

“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.”

“Lately he’s consumed by the sense that he is in fact two separate people, and soon he will have to choose which person to be on a full-time basis, and leave the other person behind.”

“He carried the secret around like something large and hot, like an overfull tray of hot drinks that he had to carry everywhere and never spill.”

“She just let things happen, like nothing meant anything to her.”

“He seemed to think Marianne had access to a range of different identities, between which she slipped effortlessly. This surprised her, because she usually felt confined inside one single personality, which was always the same regardless of what she did or said.”

“Being alone with her is like opening a door away from normal life and then closing it behind him.”

“bemoaned him with that strong grief which springs naturally from a generous heart, though it be tough as tempered steel.”

“you might as well bid a man struggling in the water, rest within arm’s length of the shore! I’m must reach it first, and then I’ll rest.”

“I have a single wish, and my whole being and faculties are yearning to attain it. They have yearned towards it so long, and so unwaveringly, that I’m convinced it will be reached — and soon — because it has devoured my existence — I’m swallowed in the anticipation of its fulfillment.”

“What fiend possesses you to stare back at me, continually, with those infernal eyes? Down with them! and don’t remind me of your existence again. I thought I had cured you of laughing!”

“both their minds tending to the same point — one loving and desiring to esteem, and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed — they contrived in the end to reach it.”

“I perceived two such radiant countenances bent over the page of the accepted book, that I did not doubt the treaty had been ratified on both sides, and the enemies were, thenceforth, sworn allies.”

“all his surly harshness had deserted him”

“Nay, if it made me a king, I’d not be scorned for seeking her goodwill any more.”

“I’ll go to hell, body and soul, before I look sideways after you again!”

“broke away, to enjoy his grief and anger in solitude.”

“But his self-love would endure no further torment”

“You have left me so long to struggle against death, alone, that I feel and see only death! I feel like death!”

“his life is not worth a farthing, and I won’t spend a farthing on him.”

“It was a strange way of killing, not by inches, but by fractions of hair-breadths,to beguile me with the spectre of a hope, through eighteen years!”

“Disturbed her? No! she has disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen years — incessantly — remorselessly”

“You shall be sorry to be yourself presently”

“she seemed to have made up her mind to enter into the spirit of her future family, and draw pleasure from the griefs of her enemies.”

“however miserable you make us, we shall still have their revenge of thinking that your cruelty rises from your greater misery! You are miserable, are you not? Lonely, like the devil, and envious like him? Nobody loves you — nobody will cry for you when you die! I wouldn’t be you!”