Paula > Recent Status Updates

”But what am I to do?” said Alice.
“Anything you like,” said the Footman, and began whistling.
“Oh, there’s no use in talking to him,” said Alice desperately: “he’s perfectly idiotic!” And she opened the door and went in.

"Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual, I wonder if I've changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!"

”He would get into his carriage, but he would feel that this thought had leaped into it at the same time and settled on his knees like a beloved pet which one takes everywhere and which he would keep with him at the table, unbeknownst to the other guests. He would stroke it, warm himself at it, yield to a light quivering that tensed his neck, all the while fastening the columbines in his buttonhole.”

"She often said: 'I do believe, of course, that poetry—well, that there could be nothing more beautiful if it was true, if poets really believed everything they said. But quite often, those people are the most calculating of all. I know something about it, because a friend of mine was in love with a poet of sorts.'"

"All day long, during those walks, I had been able to dream about what a pleasure it would be to be a friend of the Duchesse de Guermantes, to fish for trout, to go out in a boat on the Vivonne, and, greedy for happiness, ask no more from life in those moments than for it always to be made up of a succession of happy afternoons."

”She would show me the flowers that leaned along the low walls, and teach me their names. She would make me tell her the subjects of the poems that I intended to compose. And these dreams warned me that since I wanted to be a writer someday, it was time to find out what I meant to write. But as soon as I asked myself this, (…) I could no longer see anything but empty space before my attentive eyes.”

”It was like any attitude or action that reveals a person’s deep and hidden character: it has no connection with anything he has said before, we cannot seek confirmation from the culprit’s testimony for he will not confess; we are reduced to the testimony of our own senses concerning which we wonder, confronting this isolated and incoherent memory, if they were not the victims of an illusion.”

Just reached the farthest point I got to in the book in my first attempt at reading it 7 years ago - as signalled by the NYC bookmark and pressed fall leaves that I left on this page. And so I am surprised and impressed by how much I'm enjoying it this time around - and for various reasons? The child's perspective narrated in hindsight by an adult; the meta-passages where the narrator theorizes about reading; etc

"Of course my house contains every useless thing in the world. It lacks only the one essential, a large piece of sky like this one. Always try to keep a piece of sky over your life, little boy," he would add, turning to me. "You have a lovely soul of a rare quality, an artist's nature, don't ever let it go without what it needs."

The precious and fragile kiss that Mama usually entrusted to me in my bed when I was going to sleep I would have to convey from the dining room to my bedroom and protect during the whole time I undressed, (...) so that its volatile essence would not disperse and evaporate, and on precisely those evenings when I needed to receive it with most care, I had to take it, I had to snatch it brusquely, publicly.

Um infinito silêncio de centésimos de segundo fez com que percebessem que viviam uma despedida. Samuel estava cansado e confuso demais, e agora se dava conta de que, em algumas horas, estaria sem a companhia de seu amigo, o mais leal e fiel que pôde conhecer.

”Era o medo de quem foi arrancado do seu chão. (…) Aonde quer que fôssemos, encontrávamos um parente, nunca estávamos sós. Quando não éramos parentes, nos fazíamos parentes. Foi a nossa valência poder se adaptar, poder construir essa irmandade (…)”

Queria experimentar a vida, para ver o que poderia nos acontecer.

”The work had been hers, yes, but it had equally been his. It had been theirs. (…)

Since she’d started teaching and become a mother, she’d felt old, but that night, she realized she wasn’t old at all. You couldn’t be old and still be wrong about as many things as she’d been wrong about, and it was a kind of immaturity to call yourself old before you were.”

’I wish I could have saved him,’ Ant said. ‘I replay that day over and over again. If I hadn’t gone down the stairs. If I hadn’t let him go into the lobby. If—‘
Sadie stopped him. ‘That’s the gamer in you, trying to figure out how you might have beat the level. But there was nothing you could have done, Ant. The game wasn’t winnable.’

Thinking, for Sam, was necessary, and the pain made him feel stupid, an entirely new phenomenon for him.
Sam’s doctor said to him, “The good news is that the pain is in your head.”
But I am in my head, Sam thought.

”I’m making a game!” Sam rambled on about Ichigo and Sadie, and Anders, who was not a gamer, looked at him blankly, but kindly. “It seems, my friend, you have found love?”
“Anders, you talk about love more than any mathematician I know.”

Okay Goodreads, I am IN. This may be a very special book and I’ve been needing one!!!

Não, não é a sua mãe, é outra pessoa, sua mãe não diria aquilo, logo ela, Eunice, a rainha da etiqueta, do bom senso, da sobriedade, da educação. Não era mamãe me xingando, gritando comigo. Era a falta dela em seu próprio cérebro. Era ela ausente do seu corpo.

Descobri então que Eunice não foi uma só. Existiram algumas que não se contrapunham, completavam-se, não se contradiziam, somavam-se, reconstruíam-se da tragédia, alimentavam-se dela para renascer.

Tinha esperança de acordar de um pesadelo, com a volta dele, esperava um milagre, que fosse tudo um jogo de cena (…). Cada um dos filhos o enterrou à sua maneira, em épocas diferentes, silenciosamente. Depois de um, dois anos, dois anos e meio… O tempo era o seu atestado de óbito.

A memória não é apenas uma pedra com hieróglifos entalhados, uma história contada. Memória lembra dunas de areia, grãos que se movem, transferem-se de uma parte a outra, ganham formas diferentes, levados pelo vento. Memória é viva. (...) A prisão do meu pai (como a da minha mãe e da minha irmã) com o tempo ganhou outro significado, outras provas, testemunhas, releituras."

Sometimes we'd chat late into the night and she would confide in me. She told be about her college, her classmate Vandana, whose stepmother served her leftovers, and who was in love with a boy they called Koli Ramesh. It was Malati who carried letters between them. In the new house, we were locked in the cells of individual rooms, and there was no opportunity to exchange casual confidences.

As long as the house ran on Appa’s earnings his finances were known to us all. If we wanted new clothes, we knew exactly how much he could spare and what cuts would have to be made elsewhere. The result was that we simply did not desire what we couldn’t afford. When you have no choice, you have no discontent either.

Before that summer, I knew almost nothing about the Beatles. But the Beatles turned out to be one of the things you couldn’t avoid, like alcohol, or death. They went on about how they worked like a dog to make money to buy her things, and in exchange she had to give them everything. What if she didn’t? What if she didn’t know how?

This book is equal parts painful to read (come on Selim you can do SO much better) and epically on-point in regards to one facet of early college days.

Our connection with others can only be as deep as our connection with ourselves. If I don’t know and understand who I am and what I need, want, and believe, I can’t share myself with you.

My assessment so far: big enthusiast of the writing, I think Selim’s POV captures very much how my brain works too. But what is the story and why am I reading all these loosely connected college anecdotes and thoughts?

Remember the day you prayed for the things you have now. Is part of the value of practicing gratitude extending the life of the emotions that make us feel most alive?

Some good food for thought. ^

I looked ahead to see how far I had to go. The glance gave me one of my last images of Richard Parker, for at that precise moment he jumped over me. I saw his body, so immeasureably vital, stretched in the air above me, a fleeting, furred rainbow. (...) Then Richard Parker, companion of my torment, awful, fierce thing that kept me alive, moved forward and disappeared forever from my life.