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Having once fallen in love with someone who heartily recommended to me a terrible piece of fiction, only to find out after a series of more tangible disappointments that we were wildly incompatible.
Maria Popova on How to talk about books you haven’t read -
the truth is that TV tennis is to live tennis pretty much as video porn is to the felt reality of human love.
“Roger Federer as Religious Experience”, DFW -
It is, simply, entirely memorable, which makes the fact that I forgot it so thoroughly all the more difficult to account for.
“The Curse of Reading and Forgetting,” Ian Crouch -
a handsomeness that bordered on beauty
Longman and Borden, “Beckham, at 38, says he’ll bend it no longer” -
a mob so incensed it was medieval
“Messing with the Wrong City,” Dennis Lehane -
Carry on talking, my dear fellow, I’m most interested.
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams -
the petrochemically complex yellow log of sweet, spongy food product known as the Twinkie.
“Deconstructing dinner,” David Kamp -
I stood spellbound for a while, looking and looking and looking. Could I photograph what I felt, looking, looking and still looking?
“How The Steerage Happened,” Alfred Steiglitz -
‘We don’t,’ said the Controller. ‘We prefer to do things comfortably.’
‘But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.’
‘In fact,’ said Mustapha Mond, ‘you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.’
‘All right then,’ said the Savage defiantly, ‘I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.’
‘Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.’ There was a long silence.
‘I claim them all,’ said the Savage at last.
Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. ‘You’re welcome,’ he said.
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley -
The idea hovered and shimmered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking about something else.
Golden Compass, Philip Pullman
