Emily > Recent Status Updates

“Fish gotta swim and bird gotta fly; insects, it seems, gotta do one horrible thing after another.”

“ I allow the spiders the run of the house. I figure that any predator that hopes to make a living on whatever smaller creatures might blunder into a four-inch square bit of space in the corner of the bathroom, where the tub meets the floor, needs every bit of my support.”

Goodreads doesn’t list the edition I’m reading. It’s the first American edition from 1938, translated by James Cleugh. 239 pages.

“Why can humans not use their millions of words to simply tell one another what they desire?”

“He was just a little man, after all, with a little man’s job.” I dunno — I like this one so far.

“No one lives anyone here. They all just scrape against each other, like rocks in a bag.”

“Never before had time seemed so like currency, each moment a coin that could be well- or ill-spent, or even, if one wasn’t careful, wasted and lost.”

"Most people think happiness is about gaining something, but it's not. It's all about getting rid of the darkness you accumulate."

"People who grew up normal think it's something to be rejected. They're wrong. Normal is a precious kind of freedom, and if you don't have it, it's all you ever want."

Lines like this remind me of "Dandelion Wine" -- "Summer tossed out a fountain of ivy tendrils, caught us straight under the breastbones and tugged; summer, redeemed and unfurling in front of us, a million years long." God. SO effing evocative.

I like the Honda Civic metaphor.

On U.K. ban: Baker said "social class and 'optics' played into his decision a great deal. Banning pit bulls was a safe way to look as though he were being tough on crime without angering his political base, the wealthier men and women who patronized kennel clubs and enjoyed outdoor activities like fox hunting." German Shepherds & Rottweilers were responsible for more bites but tended to be owned by wealthier people.

The picture of a pile of euthanized dogs on this page has ensured I won't ever be visiting Denver! Fuck BSL.

"How many dogs in America live like this and how few of them ever hurt anybody. It's just this tiny, tiny number. How come that isn't more indicative of their various 'breed traits'? Aren't the millions of dogs that never harm anyone more significant than the few that do?"

"Every amazing and wonderful thing that happened to us was because of an animal that most people don't think of as more than a barcode in a grocery store."

"It's funny how loud horrified silence can be."

So, this Boone guy seems like a real bag of dicks.

Does anyone subscribe to kindle unlimited? If so, is it awesome?

"I'm just the cook." Hahahaha, shades of Under Siege! Something tells me he's not just the cook.

"Humans evolved to share their lives with dogs, and our brains are no longer cut out to do this work alone." I am currently covered in dogs. I often forget why I walked into a room. I'd hate to see the shape I'd be in without these guys.

"What all this really means is that what we call our "humanity" is actually a collection of traits borrowed from wolves."

I've only read the preface and I'm already crying. This may have been a mistake.

"He had, in fact, long since reconciled himself to the notion that he was not a man likely to die in his bed, though someone else's bed *was* a possibility." Oh that Scortius is such a rascal!

"They had a phrase along the Imperial road. He's sailing to Sarantium, they said when some man threw himself at an obvious and extreme hazard, risking all, changing everything one way or another, like a desperate gambler at dice putting his whole stake on the table."

"Amazing, when you thought about it: how quickly-made decisions became the life you lived."

He "then closed his eyes and brushed his lips across my face, not so much kissing as feeling the contours of cheekbone and brow, of jaw and the tender skin below the ear, seeking to know me again past skin and breath, to know me to the blood and bone, to the heart that beat beneath."

"She wanted to tell him that her difficulty now was of conceiving him to be dead, that she was delaying the moment because the loss was too great and must therefore be ignored, a life removed revealing a chasm that she had not seen because he'd filled it."