Real life, life at last laid bare and illuminated—the only life in consequence which can be said to be really lived—is literature.
-Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
Real life, life at last laid bare and illuminated—the only life in consequence which can be said to be really lived—is literature.
-Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by… I don’t care if it’s a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place, I like to know I’m leaving it.
-J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
It’s best not to flaunt the fact that the Devil is paying all your bills.
-Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
“Whut you gwine do ef hit rain?”
“Git wet, I reckon,” Frony said. “I aint never stopped no rain yit.”
-William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.
-J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Like the pulse of a perfect heart, life struck straight through the streets.
-Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
But his flawed heart—
Alack, too weak the conflict to support—
’Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief
Burst smilingly.
-William Shakespeare, King Lear
“Well, never mind what done it,” said the mole, forgetting his grammar in his pain. “It hurts just the same, whatever done it.”
-Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
I will accept either an apology or a bullet, as you prefer.
-William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!
I suppose they are homesick. I suppose everybody must be always just a little homesick.
-Joseph Conrad, Nostromo
musings inspired by literature, poetry, nature, and occasionally everything else.
A blog about reading, books, and language.