Katy > Recent Status Updates

Really struggling to finish books lately! I'm so close with this one though that I need to finish it, and I really enjoy his non-fiction pieces in this (as opposed to the fiction which is not my favorite).

"I am finally packed, and of course I have too much stuff. Trips are not trips to me. They have to be expeditions. [...] Even as a young child, I loved the idea of being self-contained. It's still a credo of mine. Back then my backpack held everything I needed."

Officially bawling, so I think that's enough for today

I. LOVE. THIS MAN

"Still, it was hard to find any real emotion. It simply wasn't there. After that long night in the rain, I'd seemed to grow cold inside, all the illusions gone, all the old ambitions and hopes for myself sucked away into the mud. Over the years, that coldness had never entirely disappeared. There were times in my life when I couldn't feel much, not sadness or pity or passion [...]"

" 'I think I'm basically an introvert,' Dinah was telling him. Dinah was telling him everything now, dragging out all of her best stuff from the shadow of her skull and into the bright sunlight of this new boy, this interesting man. 'My extroversion is a way of managing my introversion, but I'm sort of back down behind it all, waiting for the apparent me to end and the essential me to begin.' "

"And if they're not leaving, she'll leave, because she doesn't know how to be with them for long. She only knows how to get them back. She loves them until they love her. She yearns for them. This is why Dinah was bad with men"

"I'm so glad you're home. I heard a good one today--wanna hear?"
She laid her head on his tattooed arm. "What?" she said softly, breathing his musty scent.
"What are the two saddest words in the English language?"
She smiled into the curve of his arm and waited.
"What party?" he intoned, laughing his breathless, squeaky laugh, his shoulders shaking.

I REALLY do not like Vikram right now, and I'm not sure how he'll redeem himself!

Llewellyn ap Iorwerth *swoooon*

{Character prefers talking on the phone over texting; finally something that is nothing like me, because it was starting to feel like Kearsley was following me when she wrote Sara}

True, I might have trouble sometimes guessing how another person felt, but sadness was an obvious emotion and an easy one to spot most of the time. My problem wasn't that I didn't understand their feelings, only that I didn't have a clue how to respond to them. I never knew the proper thing to do or say. I wasn't good at comforting.

The levels of spying and counterintelligence had caught my interest so deeply I’d spent the past week or so reading about them, until I knew most of the spies’ and the spymasters’ names--could have probably spotted them, from their descriptions, had I been alive back then. This was just part of the way my brain processed things: nothing by half measures. Every new interest became an obsession.

My whole life I’d been teased by some people and lauded by others for my fierce fixation on time, but it wasn’t a thing I could easily change. And in this instance, turning up late wouldn’t just bother me, it would also be rude to our hostess. I’d have to go down on my own.

I was privately relieved. I didn’t dislike children, but being around them made me feel tense and uncomfortable. They were so unpredictable, bundles of energy, frequently loud and demanding attention--and often affection--in ways that I just couldn’t give them. If Denise’s son was looking for an audience, he’d find me disappointing.

Jacqui stepped out of her shoes. “You were getting that look”
“What look?”
“That look. The one that you get when you’re finding it all a bit much. When you’re tired of trying to socialize.”
I briefly glanced in the mirror that hung on the wall just behind her and couldn’t see any expression on my face but mild irritation. “I don’t have a look”
“Yes you do. You have many looks” Jacqui assured me.

"You were very good, very relaxed. It was like watching Hal the computer"

"She always felt good when she got the car washed, like she was truly participating in her life"

" I went to Madame Tussauds to see the wax statue they’d made of me. Well, not me, actually. That would have been someone lying in bed watching old movies on TV, drinking a Coke with one hand while adjusting her dog Gary’s tongue with the other."

" I wish I could go away somewhere but the only problem with that is that I’d have to go, too."

This book is one of the best things I've ever read. But it is also ripping my heart out, and I cannot remember the last time I've bawled while reading a book. Note to self, maybe officially past the point where I can read this in public/on the bus.