Barb > Recent Status Updates

Rex...acquired instead the hoarse, loud tone that was common to all his friends, as though their voices were perpetually strained to make themselves heard above a crowd, as though, with youth forsaking them, there was no time to wait the opportunity to speak, no time to listen, no time to reply; time for a laugh -- a throaty, mirthless laugh, the base currency of goodwill.

"...her eyes were full of consternation and resentment, like those of a woman who, at the end of her time, at length realizes that however luxurious the nursing home, and however well-paid the doctor, her labor is inevitable; and the lift and fall of the ship came regularly as the pains of child birth."

I wonder, is there a feminist analysis of this novel? Charles so often shows up as misogynous.

I love the contrast: lots of cursing and slang in Spanish, then BOOM! a literary reference (A lot of times she Bartlebys me, says, No, I'd rather not.)

Her mother's passing has left an ache in her, a wrongness, as if a hand has pulled out the loops and ribbons of her innards, then stuffed them haphazardly back in. Every moment of every day, she has to remind herself of the unbelievable fact that her mother is gone, that she won't see her again.

The widow bows her head, as if to hide a smile, and Tomas cannot believe that this alliance has formed so swiftly, so completely, in the time he was up the hill. How do women do that?

Edna feels no relief at the change in Tomas. Something is amiss, she knows, and she both does and doesn't want to find out what it might be.

He would say to this person beside him, if he could, Look at me, man, I survived the worst thing you might possibly imagine, and I will not be felled by the likes of you.

It's hard to show up for someone you love when they're suffering.

Anyone that dresses and does their hair as carefully as your mom does every single day is unhappy on the inside. She's trying to hide all her messiness, and I want better than that for you.

I'm she was trapped by a form of courtly love, Church imposed, whist her body cried out for wings. He held out a daily offering of feathers and wax, but she couldn't do it, couldn't leap. For she could only see all that she wasn't.

210-212
The exchange between Evelyn, Dotty, and "Margaret Someone". 🤣🤣🤣

The delicious repartee of Evelyn and Dotty, pgs 208-209 🥰😆

Buongiorno, said Cress.
Is it? Said the congress's, hurting to get inside her first-floor apartment.
She seems nice, said Cress.

Exquisitely dry. 🥰🥰🥰

(Art is) about feeling, Ulysses, that's all. People trying to make sense of something they can't make sense of.

It may take a minute to adjust to the Film Noir dialogue!

Ultimately, even love was weak against the desire to avoid pain.

He had used work to accelerate his existence, to soften life's jagged edges into a blur. And he was good at it. It gave his meaning and he had loved it but work -- to the excesses he had done it -- was also a way to life without living. A way to transfer emotions over to something less personal, something g with lower stakes.

There were many deaths in life. A person, it seemed to the Ghost now, died in stages.

The (book) characters are like people but better because you do t have to talk to them.

He read because stories gave him room to grow beyond the world he was given.

In adversity, true feelings are revealed, meaning that in the worst moments you learn who is your friend and who is not. We also say, A crisis is an opportunity riding a dangerous wind.

I may not have known why I felt compelled to go there that day, but I'll always be glad I did. Because that was the day I realized that my father was a monster. And it was never about me at all.

It pains me to say it, but Delly is a dear little girl, with thick black hair in pigtails with red ribbons and an absolute belief in herself that I haven't seen even in grown white men.

There'd been a time when I would have yearned for 100th of this beauty, but one of the many things about old age is that while aspirations of beauty may lie never, they sit well below aspirations of health, comfort, and absence of pain.

They must have moved away from the stairs because I didn't hear any more after that. But I remained where I was for a long time, shame staining my skin like a handprint after a slap.

Peter is instantly up in arms. "We should call the council," he says. Peter loves being up in arms. So do I, truth be told. It's a magnificent feeling. Superior-like.

The first inklings of life's unfairness often come from a small detail whose impact is inversely proportional to its cause.

She had only just turned eleven, but was already showing that mix of aggression and detachment that is such a contrast to the joyful spontaneity of childhood.

Goya's paintings teach us that whatever happens, humanity produces and will produce the monstrous, that it churns out nightmares. It's alarming, but Goya's painting also teaches us to admit it, to be clear sighted about our share of darkness. Even better: once we've learnt this tragic lesson, it teaches us to create our own monsters in order to sublimate them, to stop being scared of them.

That was how he (William Turner) tracked down the sublime, which is more moving than beauty and makes us sense the futility of human beings before the powers of the cosmos.