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Mrs. Dalloway

Men must not cut down trees. There is a God. (He noted such revelations on the backs of envelopes.) Change the World. No one kills from hatred. Make it known (he wrote it down). He waited. He listened. A sparrow perched on the railing opposite chirped Septimus, Septimus, four or five times over and went on, drawing its notes out, to sing freshly and piercingly in Greek words how there is no crime and, joined by another sparrow, they sang in voices prolonged and piercing in Greek words, from trees in the meadow of life beyond the river where the dead walk, how there is no death.

Moby Dick, Or, The Whale

“Look here, friend,” said I, “if you have anything important to tell us, out with it; but if you are only trying to bamboozle us, you are mistaken in your game; that’s all I have to say.”

The Library Book

Victor was planning to come in that afternoon, so Nuñez stacked up some citizenship materials to be ready for him. As he was squaring up the stack, a young woman with long thick hair walked into the center, signed in, and then approached Nuñez. She told him that she was writing a research paper on Ernest Hemingway and didn’t understand a sentence in some material she’d found. Her accent was rounded and musical, perhaps Caribbean. She took out a photocopy of the page in question. Nuñez read it and then explained it to her while she scribbled notes. 

Wuthering Heights

He then stept across the pavement to her, and said something: she seemed embarrassed, and desirous of getting away; to prevent it, he laid his hand on her arm: she averted her face; he apparently put some question which she had no mind to answer. There was another rapid glance at the house, and supposing himself unseen, the scoundrel had the impudence to embrace her. 

“Judas! Traitor!” I ejaculated. “You are a hypocrite too, are you? A deliberate deceiver.”

Great Expectations 

Infinite pains were then taken by Biddy to convey to my sister some idea of what had happened. To the best of my belief, those efforts entirely failed. She laughed and nodded her head a great many times, and even repeated after Biddy, the words “Pip” and “Property.” But I doubt if they had more meaning in them than an election cry, and I cannot suggest a darker picture of her state of mind. 

I never could have believed it without experience, but as Joe and Biddy became more and more at their cheerful ease again, I became quite gloomy. Dissatisfied with my fortune, of course I could not be; but it is possible that I may have been, without quite knowing it, dissatisfied with myself. 

The Sun Also Rises 

“Just imagine it.”

The bull-fight on the second day was much better than on the first. Brett sat between Mike and me at the barrera, and Bill and Cohn went up above. Romero was the whole show. I do not think Brett saw any other bull-fighter. No one else did either, except the hard-shelled technicians. It was all Romero. There were two other matadors, but they did not count. I sat beside Brett and explained to Brett what it was all about. I told her about watching the bull, not the horse, when the bulls charged the picadors, and got her to watching the picador place the point of his pic so that she saw what it was all about, so that it became more something that was going on with a definite end, and less of a spectacle with unexplained horrors.

Absalom, Absalom!

Because there is something in the touch of flesh with flesh which abrogates, cuts sharp and straight across the devious intricate channels of decorous ordering, which enemies as well as lovers know because it makes them both:–touch and touch of that which is the citadel of the central I-Am’s private own: not spirit, soul; the liquorish and ungirdled mind is anyone’s to take in any darkened hallway of this earthly tenement. 

Henry & June

All the rest was literary, intellectual. There was nothing wrong with acting roles except that one must not take them seriously. But I become sincere and go all the way. And I then become uneasy and unhappy. Allendy also believes my interest in perversions to be a pose. 

Long after he said this, I remembered that the place where I have been most soundly happy is Switzerland, where I lived washed of all external roles. Do I think myself interesting in a picture hat, soft dress, little make-up, as I am in Switzerland? No. But I think myself interesting in a Russian hat! Lack of faith in my fundamental values. 

At this point I began to balk a little. If psychoanalysis is going to annihilate all nobility in personal motives and in art by the discovery of neurotic roots, what does it substitute in place of them? What would I be without my decoration, costume, personality? Would I be a more vigorous artist? 

Allendy says I must live with greater sincerity and naturalness. I must not overstep the bound of my nature, create dissonances, deviations, roles (as June has done), because it means misery…

… He is glad of the warmth now appearing in our relationship. But he shows me how the dream betrays that my happiness comes more from his neglect of other people to give me all his attention than from the attention itself. “We come to the sensitive point again. Your unsureness, the need to be loved exclusively. There is in all your dreams a great possessiveness, too. To cling in love is bad, and it only comes from lack of confidence. Therefore when someone understands you and loves you, you are inordinately grateful.”

Allendy always restores sincerity. He finds that I suppress my jealousies and my anger, turn them upon myself. He says I must express them, get rid of them. I practice a false goodness. I am not really good. I force myself to be generous, forgiving. “For a time,” says Allendy, “act as angrily as you want to.”

Terrible results from this suggestion. I found coming to the surface a thousand causes for resentment against Henry, his too easy acceptance of my sacrifices, his unreasoned defense of anything that is attacked, his praise of ordinary, common women, his fear of intelligent women, his vituperations against June, the magnificent being. 

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Úrsula compared him with his brother at that time and could not understand how the twins, who looked like the same person in childhood, had ended up so differently. Her perplexity did not last very long, for quite soon Aureliano Segundo began to show signs of laziness and dissipation. While he was shut up in Melquíades’ room he was drawn into himself, the way Colonel Aureliano Buendía had been in his youth. But a short time after the Treaty of Neerlandia, a piece of chance took him out of his withdrawn self and made him face the reality of the world. A young woman who was selling numbers for the raffle of an accordion greeted him with a great deal of familiarity. Aureliano Segundo was not surprised, for he was frequently confused with his brother. But he did not clear up the mistake, not even when the girl tried to soften his heart with sobs, and she ended taking him to her room…At the end of the two weeks Aureliano Segundo realized that the woman had been going to bed alternately with him and his brother, thinking that they were the same man, and instead of making things clear, he arranged to prolong the situation. He did not return to Malquíades’ room…

For almost two months he shared the woman with his brother. He would watch him, mix up his plans, and when he was sure that José Arcadio Segundo was not going to visit their common mistress that night, he would go and sleep with her… Her name was Petra Cotes… She was a clean young mulatto woman with yellow almond-shaped eyes that gave her face the ferocity of a panther, but she had a generous heart and a magnificent vocation for love. 

The Luminaries

“Insurance,” said Carver. 

“Among other things, yes.”

Humans of New York

“After the kid came, we both became less attached to each other and more attached to the kid. We stopped talking to each other at night. We stopped being intimate.”

“Did you realize this was happening?”

“We did.”

“Then why didn’t you stop it?”

“Because I think we both wanted it to happen.”

Jitterbug Perfume

The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.

The difference between love and logic is that in the eyes of a lover, a toad can be a prince, whereas in the analysis of a logistician, the lover would have to *prove* that the toad was a prince, an enterprise destined to dull the shine of many a passion. 

Logic limits love, which may be why Descartes never married.