Eva > Recent Status Updates

The Perfect Travel Buddy by Paolo Giordano

If Wishes Was Horses by David Mitchell
Systems by Charles Yu

“i have become afflicted too—when I see her walk through the doorway, or come about the corner, or appear on the stairwell, the muscles in my legs are subjected to a form of atrophy, and it takes all my willpower to remain upright. This makes me sound as if I’m ill; I am not, I have never felt better.”

“darned sheets on a bed, a sketchbook in the corner, a fine lock of baby hair hidden between two pages. On and on and on, she drew the details of undetailed lives. Of forgotten women who once may have wanted so much more.”

“and Alys came to understand why women would seek refuge on a bridge and she drew their youth, their pain, their aging. Their existence and worth given shape by a virgin who birthed a child. She drew the lives they’d given up in the microscopic study of a flower, a vase, a cup, a plate, a piece of fabric – lace, intricate and fine – …

“ the shared loss became the shared bond.”

…Maybe it didn’t matter if you are world-famous heart throb, or a painful geek. Maybe it didn’t matter if your friend was possibly dying. Maybe you just got through it. Maybe that was all you could ask for.”

..Getting to level 7 in Dragon Master and knowing there were 20 levels to go.
Maybe happiness was just a matter of the little upticks — the traffic signal that said “Walk” the the second you got there – and downticks – the itchy tag at the back of your collar – that happened to every person in the course of a day. Maybe everybody had the same allotted measure of happiness within each day...

“Maybe, she thought as she walked, Brian McBrian was on something important. Maybe happiness didn’t have to be about the big, sweeping circumstances, about having everything in your life in place. Maybe it was about stringing together a bunch of small pleasures. Wearing slippers and watching the Miss Universe contest. Eating a brownie with vanilla ice cream...

“if indeed there exists a physical heaven, I hope it is patterned after North Carolina between the summer hours of 6 and 8 AM. The haunting call of doves, leaves jeweled with dew, the glint of the sun in oak branches, robins and roosters endn duet, fog – something eternal exist in those minutes that a person carries in memory for life”

“i smelled in that crowd, the odor of flowers and fish, together, the effluvium of real women somewhere in the crowd. The heavy magnolia and the sardines. I held to my books, becoming the very nose of lust.” LMAO DAMN OKAY

“..i’m too embarrassed about my grief – how raw it makes me feel – and eventually, I swallow it, burying it deep. It’s why flirting with straight girls was so appealing to me. Their leaving was inevitable, so I never had to let them in.”

“I intellectualize the messiness of what I’m feeling about the verses, my doubts and my sadness, into discussions about the material consequences of ruling. I don’t tell her, or any of my other friends, when they say things that hurt me, preferring to wait for the feelings to dissipate over having conflict. I’m so unused to sharing hard things that when my cat dies suddenly, I don’t tell any of my friends..

“..and it felt like it had the night before, like a crushing weight. So do boys and men announce their intentions. They cover you like a sarcophagus lid. And call it love.”

… so do not fritter away your days. Sooner than you fear, you will stand before mirror and a care home, look at your body, and think, ET, locked in a ruddy cupboard for Fortnite.”

…leave you behind, betray your tribal affiliations whenever you speak. On escalators, on trunk roads, in supermarket aisles, the living will overtake you, incessantly. Elegant women will not see you. Store detectives will not see you. Sales people will not see you, unless they sell stair lifts or fraudulent insurance policies. Only babies, cats, and drug addicts will acknowledge your existence…

“you will not apply for membership, but the tribe of the elderly will claim you. Your present will not keep pace with the worlds. This slippage will stretch your skin, sag your skeleton, erode your hair and memory, make your skin turn opaque so your twitching organs and blue cheese veins will be semi-visible. he will venture out only in daylight, avoiding weekends and school holidays. Language, too, will…

“it wasn’t until i got sober that i realized i had taken all those bad masculine traits and magnified them as a defense mechanism when i would drink.”

“i was an addict in almost a competitive sense; i was was gonna drink every guy under the table…I would black out and start fights with men. i must’ve thought of myself as a big, tough guy, so when i got with a girl i had to be that guy, because that’s who they must have seen. i didn’t get that people just liked me because of me…

“But a lot of the things i did back then were because of my own gender dysphoria or whatever. i knew the way women were y treated and i refused to be treated like that, therefore i was completely embracing my masculine side—but never rejecting that i was a woman or denying it—and was the most masculine woman i could possibly be.….

loved:
The Girl with the Big Red Suitcase (Rachel Kushner)
The Morningside (Téa Obreht)