...watching the gulls cut the air into sharp white patterns with their wings.
The sun dappled the table and gave her a curious look of transparency, as if she were caught in a net of light; as if she were composed of lozenges of floating colours.
Everything was full of the stir, the potency, the fecundity of spring.
...with eyes that seemed like bright stones under a film of water. They're like drops of glass under water, he thought.
The fire was still blazing; the chairs, drawn out in a circle, still seemed to hold the skeleton of the party in their empty arms.
Although it was close on midnight, it scarcely seemed to be night; but rather some ethereal disembodied day,...
She drank; the wine seemed to caress a knob in her spine.
The sparks went volleying up the chimney in a shower of gold eyes.
Here and there a star pierced the blue.
The uproar of the traffic merged into one growl.
Innumerable needles of water shot down.
"If we do not know ourselves, how can we know other people?" he had said.
The sun gilded the fruit; the flowers had a blurred brilliance.
A plain face scarcely changed; whereas beautiful faces wither.
This half knowing people, this half being known, this feeling of the eye on the flesh, like a fly crawling--how uncomfortable it was, he thought;...
"...how can we make laws, religions, that fit, that fit, when we don't know ourselves?"
"--society or solitude; which is best," he finished his sentence.
The curl of apple-skin lay on his plate, coiled up like a snake's skin, he thought; and the banana-skin was like the finger of a glove that had been ripped open.
She waved her hand towards a long lamp-starred street on the left.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
The Years by Virginia Woolf
His hand began its voyage up and down her neck,...
Above the roofs was one of those red nd fitful London sunsets that make window after window burn gold.
...she could see flamingo-coloured curls of cloud lying on a pale-blue sky.
..;the hair which had been red was now white, save that there were queer yellow patches in it, as if some locks had been dipped in the yolk of an egg.
The trees were trembling their shadows over the pavement.
...and her face cracked like an old glazed pot.
There were reflections in the water, branches and a pale strip of sky.
It was midsummer; and the nights were hot. The moon, falling on water, made it white, inscrutable, whether deep or shallow.
The chair, standing empty, as if waiting for someone, had a look of ceremony;...
All her limbs seemed to bend and flow in the lilt and curve of the music;...
How terrible old age was, she thought; shearing off all one's faculties, one by one, but leaving something alive in the centre:...
It was odd how different the same person seemed to two different people, she thought.
...the clouds kept their freedom, wandering fitfully, staining windows gold, daubing them black, passed and vanished,...
...the ceiling trembled with a watery pattern of fluctuating light.
Slowly the world emerged from darkness. The sea became like the skin of an innumerable scaled fish, glittering gold.
In four months questions accumulated. Out they came drop by drop.
...and then, to her delight, the liquid call of an owl going from tree to tree looping them with silver.
Wine was good--it broke down barriers.
Fragments of other people's talk reached them in broken sentences.
There was a tang of earth in the air;...
Above the roofs was one of those red nd fitful London sunsets that make window after window burn gold.
...she could see flamingo-coloured curls of cloud lying on a pale-blue sky.
..;the hair which had been red was now white, save that there were queer yellow patches in it, as if some locks had been dipped in the yolk of an egg.
The trees were trembling their shadows over the pavement.
...and her face cracked like an old glazed pot.
There were reflections in the water, branches and a pale strip of sky.
It was midsummer; and the nights were hot. The moon, falling on water, made it white, inscrutable, whether deep or shallow.
The chair, standing empty, as if waiting for someone, had a look of ceremony;...
All her limbs seemed to bend and flow in the lilt and curve of the music;...
How terrible old age was, she thought; shearing off all one's faculties, one by one, but leaving something alive in the centre:...
It was odd how different the same person seemed to two different people, she thought.
...the clouds kept their freedom, wandering fitfully, staining windows gold, daubing them black, passed and vanished,...
...the ceiling trembled with a watery pattern of fluctuating light.
Slowly the world emerged from darkness. The sea became like the skin of an innumerable scaled fish, glittering gold.
In four months questions accumulated. Out they came drop by drop.
...and then, to her delight, the liquid call of an owl going from tree to tree looping them with silver.
Wine was good--it broke down barriers.
Fragments of other people's talk reached them in broken sentences.
There was a tang of earth in the air;...
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Beloved Chicago Man by Simone de Beauvoir
Letters to Nelson Algren 1947-64
...this poverty seemed refreshing, after the heavy odour of the dollars in the big hotels and the elegant restaurants, which I found hard to take.
...and finally the intoxication of understanding.
With you pleasure was love, and now pain is love too. We must know every kind of love.
Just now I do not see exactly why anybody should ever write anything. The world just as it is is so big; it exists and needs no words.
The walls are pink--that is nice--as pink as a toothpaste.
After dinner I sat a long time in the garden and looked at the sky which was losing its blue and pink colors, and looked at the nice bit of glittering moon above the roof, and I felt happy to be a human beaing with two eyes and a heart.
...this poverty seemed refreshing, after the heavy odour of the dollars in the big hotels and the elegant restaurants, which I found hard to take.
...and finally the intoxication of understanding.
With you pleasure was love, and now pain is love too. We must know every kind of love.
Just now I do not see exactly why anybody should ever write anything. The world just as it is is so big; it exists and needs no words.
The walls are pink--that is nice--as pink as a toothpaste.
After dinner I sat a long time in the garden and looked at the sky which was losing its blue and pink colors, and looked at the nice bit of glittering moon above the roof, and I felt happy to be a human beaing with two eyes and a heart.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Prelude by Katherine Mansfield
from the short story:
...Linda Burnell could not possibly held a lump of a child...
The fat creaking body leaned across the gate, and the big jelly of a face smiled.
Long pencil rays of sunlight shone through and the wavy shadow of a bush outside danced on the gold lines.
...she heard the silence spinning its soft endless web...
Linda looked up at the fat swelling plant with its cruel leaves and fleshy stem.
...and the lamp made a big soft bubble of light on the ceiling.
...Linda Burnell could not possibly held a lump of a child...
The fat creaking body leaned across the gate, and the big jelly of a face smiled.
Long pencil rays of sunlight shone through and the wavy shadow of a bush outside danced on the gold lines.
...she heard the silence spinning its soft endless web...
Linda looked up at the fat swelling plant with its cruel leaves and fleshy stem.
...and the lamp made a big soft bubble of light on the ceiling.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Taken from his autobiography Living To Tell The Tale:
Before adolescence, memory is more interested in the future than the past,...
...and the air was like a diamond,...
At that time Bogota was a remote, lugubrious city where an insomniac rain had been falling...
...an iron good health that the sneak attacks of adversity would never defeat...
Before adolescence, memory is more interested in the future than the past,...
...and the air was like a diamond,...
At that time Bogota was a remote, lugubrious city where an insomniac rain had been falling...
...an iron good health that the sneak attacks of adversity would never defeat...
Thursday, October 25, 2007
From Bleak House by Charles Dickens
from Chapter 1
Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes---gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun.
These are all yawning; for no crumb of amusement ever falls...
...the reply that slides out of Mr. Tangle.
...give occasion for the least impeachment of his integrity.
She is perfectly well-bred. If she could be translated to Heaven tomorrow, she might be expected to ascend without any rapture.
She has beauty still, and if it be not in its heyday, it is not yet in its autumn.
...the old school---a phrase generally meaning any school that seems never to have been young...
Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes---gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun.
These are all yawning; for no crumb of amusement ever falls...
...the reply that slides out of Mr. Tangle.
...give occasion for the least impeachment of his integrity.
She is perfectly well-bred. If she could be translated to Heaven tomorrow, she might be expected to ascend without any rapture.
She has beauty still, and if it be not in its heyday, it is not yet in its autumn.
...the old school---a phrase generally meaning any school that seems never to have been young...
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