Priya’s Reviews > East of Eden > Status Update

Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn’t in time.

In uncertainty I’m certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted shortcuts to love.

There’s nothing sadder to me than associates held together by nothing but the glue of postage stamps. If you can’t see or hear or touch a man, it’s best to let him go.

And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist — or worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it.

And the women who had thought they wanted dresses never realised that what they had wanted was happiness.

There’s more beauty in the truth, even if it’s dreadful beauty.

‘Thou mayest, Thou mayest!' What glory! It is true that we are weak and sick and quarrelsome, but if that is all we ever were, we would, millenniums ago, have disappeared from the face of the earth.

But the choice, Lee, the choice of winning! I had never understood it or accepted it before.

Maybe later I'll sort it out to hatred. There was no interval from loveliness to horror, you see. I'm confused, confused.