“But Polly was thirty pounds overweight and he had never really liked fat women; he had never really liked any woman who wasn’t a dark-eyed blonde, who didn’t speak at least one language other than English, who didn’t have an income of her own and who couldn’t say the Girl Scout Oath.”
—
John Cheever, Falconer
(via talesofpassingtime)
“Friends I ‘ave had; four of ‘em; and their names was Brandy, Whisky, Rum, an’ Gin. But they’ve cost me a good deal, an’ somehow they ain’t quite what they used to be. They used to make me merry for a while, now and then; but they’ve taken now to burnin’ up my inside, an’ filling my ‘ead with devils; an’ I’m gettin’ afeard of ‘em, an’ they’ll ‘ave to see me through to the end.”
—
George Gissing, The Unclassed
(via talesofpassingtime)
“But I noticed the ladies seemed annoyed, at my cigar, no doubt. One of them stared at me through her tortoise-shell lorgnette. I did nothing again, for they said nothing. If they’d said anything, warned me, asked me — there is such a thing as language after all! But they were silent… . Suddenly, without the slightest preface — I assure you without the slightest, as though she had suddenly taken leave of her senses — the pale blue one snatched the cigar out of my hand and flung it out of the window. The train was racing along. I gazed at her aghast. A savage woman, yes, positively a woman of quite a savage type; yet a plump, comfortable-looking, tall, fair woman, with rosy cheeks (too rosy, in fact). Her eyes glared at me. Without uttering a word and with extraordinary courtesy, the most perfect, the most refined courtesy, I delicately picked up the lap-dog by the collar in two fingers and flung it out of the window after the cigar! It uttered one squeal. The train was still racing on.”
—
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
(via talesofpassingtime)
“She kept her wide-set eyes, clouded-glass gray and slightly bloodshot, fixed upon me, and I saw the stealthy thought showing through them that perhaps after all Mona was right, and she, orphan Lo, could expose me without getting penalized herself.”
—
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
(via talesofpassingtime)
“‘I liked her all right, for a couple of days,’ said Gerald. ‘But a week of her would have turned me over. There’s a certain smell about the skin of those women, that in the end is sickening beyond words — even if you like it at first.’”
—
D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love
(via talesofpassingtime)
“Two farmers each claimed to own a certain cow. While one pulled on its heads and the other pulled on its tail, the cow was milked by a lawyer.”
— Jewish parable that made me smile.
“No, it seems to me that more often than not the ones who get the place of honor turn out to have been the least deserving. The deserving ones often take a back seat, either out of modesty or out of self-respect. Lincoln never wanted to become President of the United States; it was forced on him. He was practically rail-roaded in, by Christ. Fortunately he turned out to be the right man—but it could just as well have been otherwise. He wasn’t chosen because he was the right man. Quite the contrary. Well shit, I’m getting off the track. I don’t know what the hell started me off…”
—
Henry Miller, Sexus
(via talesofpassingtime)
“If the accounts we read of savages be true, they obey the laws of nature: they neither know the mean rapacity of avarice, nor the false and fantastic notions of dignity, which have raised me up an enemy in my own father. They will not harass and persecute two lovers, when they see us adopt their own simple habits.’ I was therefore at ease upon that point.”
—
Abbe Prevost, Manon Lescaut
(via talesofpassingtime)
“I drink to make other people more interesting.”
— -Attributed to many, lived out by me
