Blue Nights

"Memories are by definition of times past, things gone. Memories are the Westlake uniforms in the closet, the faded and cracked photographs, the invitations to the weddings of the people who are no longer married, the mass cards from the funerals of the people whose faces you no longer remember. Memories are what you no longer want to remember."

Blue Nights, p. 66
By Joan Didion
Published 2011

i'm alive

My last post was practically three months ago. Three. That's pretty embarrassing. I'm going to try my best to dodge all glances and stares that indicate my abandonment. Thank you for lingering.

The Marriage Plot

Source: LPH

"In Madeleine's face was a stupidity Mitchell had never seen before. It was the stupidity of all normal people. It was the stupidity of the fortunate and beautiful, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable."

The Marriage Plot, p. 77
By Jeffery Eugenides
Published 2011

A Visit from the Goon Squad

"I was working for the city as a janitor in a neighborhood elementary school and, in summer, collecting litter in the park alongside the East River near the Williamsburg Bridge. I felt no shame whatsoever in these activities, because I understood what almost no one else seemed to grasp: that there was only an infinitesimal difference, a difference so small that it barely existed except as a figment of the human imagination, between working in a tall green glass building on Park Avenue and collecting litter in a park. In fact, there may have been no difference at all."

A Visit from the Goon Squad, p. 71
By Jennifer Egan
Published 2010

Tuck Everlasting

"The ownership of land is an odd thing when you come to think of it. How deep, after all, can it go? If a person owns a piece of land, does he own it all the way down, in ever narrowing dimensions, till it meets all other pieces at the center of the earth? Or does ownership consist of only a thin crust under which the friendly worms have never heard of trespassing?"

Tuck Everlasting, p. 7
By Natalie Babbit
Published 1975

The Westing Game

"All quotations were either from the Bible or Shakespeare."

The Westing Game, p. 51
By Ellen Raskin
Published 1978

The House on Mango Street

"People who live on hills sleep so close to the stars they forget those of us who live too much on earth. They don't look down at all except to be content to live on hills. They have nothing to do with last week's garbage or fear of rats. Night comes. Nothing wakes them but the wind."

Bums in the Attic from The House on Mango Street, pp. 86-87
By Sandra Cisneros
Published 1984