"Victoria closes her eyes, breathing in the familiar scent, and for a moment it's as if they've never been apart. They're still Vixen and Cassandra, summer sisters forever. The rest is a mistake, a crazy joke."
"Her father, a man who looked surprised when hr opened their front door to find he had four noisy children inside. A man if so few words he could spend a whole weekend without speaking."
"She imagined jumping into his arms, hugging him as hard as she could to show how thankful she was, but that would have embarrassed both of them."
"She's too tired to worry. She can't remember what it's like to not be tired."
"Once Victoria gets a taste of another way of life, she'll be lost to them."
"All he wanted was a decent job, a family of his own, kids to love. He'd be a real father, not that he'd ever seen one in action, but he'd figure it out. Then he met Tawny, a woman who knew her mind. He liked that about her. She was no wish-wash like his mother. Now...hell, it's all different. And it's made Tawny hard. Nobody's fault. Just the way it is."
"Caitlin didn't always tell the truth. She left things out. Sometimes, important things."
"She wondered if all the firsts in her life would go by so quickly, and be forgotten just as quickly."
"It was the kind of summer you don't write home about. Vix didn't exactly lie, but like Caitlin, she began to practice selective truth telling. What her family didn't know wouldn't hurt them."
"He was so laid back he was practically horizontal."
"They clasped hands, closed their eyes, and vowed to never be ordinary."
"'I like the way you worry about me,' Caitlin said.
"'Somebody has to.'"
"A person without curiosity may as well be dead."
"Maybe she was going to ignore Vix's question. She did that when someone asked her something she didn't want to answer. She'd just act as if she hadn't heard a word."
"She's a flake but she loves us."
"Fifteen years ago she'd thought they'd be together forever. Fifteen years ago she'd woven ribbons through her hair."
"Save your tears for something important, Victoria. There's no need to display your emotions in public. Do you want those boys to have power over you? Keep your feelings to yourself. Don't ever show anyone your disappointment."
"'You know why she hates you? It's because you get to escape. We all hate you for that.' Lanie spoke without emotion, and suddenly Vix understood everything. She got to escape and they didn't."
"Tawny used to tell them Nathan was a gift from God, to teach them to be strong, to teach them to count their blessings. But what about Nathan? What kind of gift had God given him?"
"'Someday they're going to fall in love with me.'
"'Why both? Why not just one?'
"'Because it's more interesting if it's both.' "
"'Why does [your mother] have to die for you to grow up and take control of your own life?'"
"I don't like to see young girls getting in over their heads [with older boys]. It's just not wise."
"He's not like anything. He's a person who just happens to have been born with something he can't control. It could have happened to you. It could have happened to any of us. So the next time you see someone in a chair, someone spastic, just imagine if that were you! The same you who standing here now, but your mind's been trapped inside a body you can't control."
"You weren't always born to the right parents. And parents didn't necessarily get the kids they were meant to raise."
"She hated the unpredictability of her body. She hated being fourteen. It felt like a punishment. She just didn't know for what."
"Things change... Things happen... Things you can't even imagine when you're young and full of hope."
"There might be no tomorrow and even if there is, nobody gives a damn."
"Why anyone has children when they could have dogs is beyond me. You get everything from a dog you'd get from a child, plus total acceptance, absolute gratitude."
"She was beginning to see her father as her champion within the family. She just wished he'd be more demonstrative, more open in his love, if love was what it was about."
"For the rest of her life, every lovers' quarrel would remind Vix of this night, this night when anger crackled in the air. She vowed been in there no guy would ever make her feel that bad."
"Love him? I hardly know him. I'll probably never see him again. It was mostly... Curiosity. But at least I got it out of the way."
"'Cold?' he asked, as she began to pull [the T-shirt] over her head.
"'No.'
"'Then don't...'
"So she didn't."
"'You're not scared if me, are you?' she teased in a husky voice, a voice she didn't recognize as her own.
"'Yeah, I am...' And from the way he said it she was almost sure it was true."
"Woody Allen was obsessed by [death]. Most creative geniuses are."
"She wanted me to make promises I wasn't ready to keep."
"There's something about being her first, about teaching her everything his way."
"She's got a new guy now. Maybe he can make her come. Maybe he doesn't care if she doesn't."
"Sure he'll come...any second now. So what if he has to tell her he loves her during the act? At that moment he does."
"'God knows what she was following.'
"'Maybe she thought she was in love.'
"'That was her first mistake.'
"'And her last.'"
"You're so scared of that side of yourself you have to run away."
"You're an emotional iceberg, terrified of your own feelings."
"A letter telling him she loved him, apologizing for thinking only of herself that summer, for being too munch in love."
"One thing she knew, she wasn't going to wind up like her mother, disappointed and pissed off at the world."
"Every experience with Caitlin was unforgettable. That wasn't the point."
"How serious? Did she mean were they making plans? They never talked about the future. Wasn't it enough to be in love? Totally, completely, hopelessly in love?"
"'Vix isn't going to do anything foolish, are you?' Lamb asked, to ease Abby's fears.
"Before Vix could answer Abby said, 'But she's in love... Anyone with eyes can see that.'"
"If being in love means giving up your freedom, not to mention your opportunities, then I haven't missed anything."
"Sometimes she worried they were acting old, settled, more tired than excited when they were together. But that would change, wouldn't it, when she was out of school? The real world couldn't be this hard."
"How come he can't talk to them...to his daughters? Do they know he loves them?"
"For a minute she considered letting down her guard, telling him how uncertain she is was about life and love and everything in between."
"She no longer knew her family, and they certainly didn't know her."
"If he expected her to argue he was mistaken. She nodded her head calmly and just like that, with no discussion, no questions, no anything, they separated."
"He's always waiting and worrying she's going to end it. Always looking for signs, expecting the worst. So he jumps the gun, says it out loud before she can. She doesn't even cry. Nothing. That proves it, doesn't it?"
"Star comes on to him, suggests they get together. So they do. In the storeroom of her shop. ... 'Do me again,' Star says, an hour later. So he does her again. But when he falls asleep, he dreams only of Victoria."
"Live for the moment. There might be no tomorrow. And even if there is, nobody really gives a damn."
"Once I'd satisfied my curiosity... Well, we didn't have that much to say to one another. Two weeks was more than enough."
"She just hopes Vix won't slip back into her romance with Bru because it's easy, because he's there. She knows how hard it is to break away..."
"The peonies crushing beneath her released their fragrance. She would never smell peonies again without reliving this moment."
"The problem was, she didn't know what she wanted. Except him. She wanted him."
"Her father's hopes and dreams for her, if she had any, were never articulated."
"You're lucky. You don't have to live up to anyone's expectations but your own."
"She was amazed that these people, who seemed to her to have it made, were already looking for a way out."
"Do you marry someone because the sex is good? Do you marry someone because you know, deep down, he's a decent person, even if you can't talk about the same books?"
"He grabbed the jewelry box out of her hand and for a minute she thought he might hurl it into the river. But no, he shoved it back in his pocket, too practical to give in to his emotions. They were a lot alike, weren't they? Two people who had trouble sharing their thoughts. Two people who kept everything inside. Had she mistaken his silence for depth? His wounded look for sensitivity? She didn't know. She didn't know anything except she wasn't ready. She couldn't promise him the rest of her life. She had no idea where she was going."
"There's a Caitlin in every junior high. You have to get over her and get on with your life."
"Maia worried every time she met a new guy about how it would end, how bad she'd feel when it did, how long it would take her to get over him, whether it was even worth the trouble in the first place. She had no time or energy for bad relationships."
"Some people never get over their first loves. They spend their whole lives trying to recapture the thrill. Sometimes, after fifty years they get back together. They meet at some reunion or other and realize they were meant to be together."
"Victoria is the least spontaneous person in our entire class, but I'd trust her with my life."
"Her life was full. It was interesting. A person didn't necessarily have to be in love."
"Got to keep in touch with your old friends. Old friends know you best."
"For a moment it was as if they'd never been apart. They were still Vixen and Cassandra, summer sisters forever. The rest was a mistake, a crazy joke."
"Caitlin isn't someone to get over. She's someone to come to terms with, the way you have to come to terms with your parents, your siblings. You can't deny they ever happened. You can't deny you ever loved the., love them still, even if loving them causes you pain."
"Caitlin was the magnet. She was just a particle in her magnetic field."
"This island of memories - all the best and worst of her life."
"Maybe that's his problem. He loves them both. He's glad he doesn't have to choose. Glad they've done it for him."
"'I'll always love you. Promise you'll always love me?'
"'You know I will.' And it's true, no matter what, she'll always love Caitlin."
"Love is a hard game to play, my darlings, play it well."
Showing posts with label sam's pick. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sam's pick. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 8, 2020
Friday, May 20, 2016
Sam Reviews "The Time Keeper" by Mitch Albom - May 2016
Sam's Notes Taken Along the Way
Prologue
Chapter 1
"Voices. Endless voices. ... They want one thing only. Time."
Beginning
Chapter 2
I am going to try not to jot too much down but I love Mitch Albom's writing
"This is often the way it is between girls and boys. For these two, it is the way it will always be."
"And on this early page of man’s story, one different child can change the world."
"Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. ... Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out."
Chapter 6
"There are as many expressions with “time” as there are minutes in a day. But once, there was no word for it at all. Because no one was counting."
Chapter 8
I almost laughed out loud about Victor calling research thinking that, just because he is rich, he can find the answer for Immortality.
Chapter 9
"Nim was wrong. There was no divine battle between day and night. Dor had captured them both in a bowl."
Chapter 10
I don't come from a family of divorce, so maybe I don't have any right to say, but I hate when parents in books or movies let their kids get away with anything, as if not having rules will make their kids forget that mom and dad don't love each other any more.
Chapter 15
"...he begged the most high gods—the ones that ruled over the sun and moon—to stop everything, to keep the world dark, to let his water clock overflow. But when he allowed his eyelids the slightest lift, he saw what he dreaded, the first change of colors on the horizon. He saw the bowl was nearly to the notch of day. He saw that his measures were accurate, and he hated that they were accurate...”
Tyler, (or anyone I suppose), do you know the story of the Tower of Babel? Are the names and stories accurate in this book? I only know the part about the tower falling and creating language barriers.
Cave
Chapter 17
"'No. In this cave, you will not age a moment.'
"Dor looked away, ashamed.
"'I deserve no such gift'
"'It is not a gift,' the old man said."
“Soon man will count all his days, and then smaller segments of the day, and then smaller still—until the counting consumes him, and the wonder of the world he has been given is lost.”
Chapter 18
I like that Ethan is a "popular kid" who still helps at a homeless shelter, even if he probably only does it because his dad asks him to.
Chapter 19
"...holding onto things will only break your heart.”
Chapter 22
"Like other men of enormous power, Victor could not imagine the world without him. He felt almost obligated to stay alive."
--This line made me think of Donald Trump.
Chapter 23
"he sensed by the sheer volume that Earth had become a very crowded place, and mankind did much more than hunt or build; it labored, it traveled, it made war, it despaired. And it never had enough time."
The In-Between
Chapter 25
It does seem super weird that if you have your body frozen, you get put in upside down. And that there are 6 people to a tank.
Chapter 26
"The rain mixes with gas. The new acidic water eats through rocks, and tiny fractures grow into passageways. Eventually—after many thousands of years—these passageways might create an opening large enough for a man. So Dor’s cave was already a product of time."
--I just thought this was an interesting thing to know (something I don't believe I ever learned in school) and also a lovely metaphor.
"Once, he had prided himself on keeping time with water. But man invents nothing God did not create first. Dor was living in the biggest water clock of all."
"Not aging is not the same as living, and without human contact, his soul dried up."
"As the voices from Earth increased exponentially, Dor heard them without distinction, the way one hears falling raindrops."
--I always imagined that's how God feels about people praying. But that he had the power to hone in on specific voices if he wanted to. Which is why I always felt guilty praying about stupid things.
"He was doing what man does when left with nothing. He was telling himself his own life story."
Chapter 27
"She remembered a time when he’d kiss her at the door, lift her a few inches off the ground and spoil her with questions like “Where do you want to go this weekend? London? Paris?” Once, on the balcony of a seaside villa, she said she wished she’d met him earlier in life, and he said, “We’re gonna make up for that. We’re gonna live a long time together.” She reminded herself there were moments like that once, and that she had to be patient now, more compassionate; she could not know what he was feeling inside—the dwindling days, the impending death. However cranky or distant he got, she was determined to make the little time they had left more like the start of their life together, and less like the vast, joyless middle. She did not know, as Victor disappeared into his study, that he was thinking about another life altogether."
Falling
Chapter 29
“You marked the minutes,” the old man said. “But did you use them wisely? To be still? To cherish? To be grateful? To lift and be lifted?”
“What difference could two people make?”
“You were one person,” the old man said. “And you changed the world.”
Chapter 30
"After Ethan’s cancellation, Sarah might have thought twice about another date. But a desperate heart will seduce the mind."
Chapter 31
I never thought the idea of freezing your body was creepy (not for me, but not creepy) until reading the details in this book. Fuck that, I'll die when I die, thank you very much.
Earth
Chapter 34
Why would Dor come to earth and basically take over the form of a pinata?
Chapter 35
I hate this whole "Sarah wears make up to impress Ethan ... and it works! Sarah knows to pretend to like vodka. Sarah lies about movies she likes." I guess it is "real" but it's also super annoying haha
"She realized Ethan was a better-looking boy than she was a girl, and she pondered how much “gratitude” she was supposed to show him for that. They’d kissed—a lot—and he’d wanted her. Somebody wanted her. That was what mattered."
--Oh god...yep, this was my exact mentality in high school. (And to be honest sometimes it still is).
Chapter 36
"six thousand years of hair" holy shit.
Chapter 38
"Dor thought about the centuries he had been made to suffer in the cave. He wondered if every clock watcher pays some kind of price."
"His education concerning the modern world was complete. Dor had spent one hundred years observing a single day."
--I've never really thought about controlling time, but, for real, even if you couldn't go back in time, the ability to slow time down to such a degree that you could read a third of a library in less than a day. Damn.
Chapter 39
"As he walked between the massive skyscrapers, he was reminded of Nim’s tower. He wondered if there were no end to man’s ambitions."
City
Chapter 40
"Then a French mathematician tied a string to a timepiece, put it around his wrist, and man began to wear time on his body."
Chapter 42
"Sometimes, when you are not getting the love you want, giving makes you think you will."
--Again, fuck me for relating to the most pathetic character in this book.
Chapter 46
It is so awkward that Sarah just rambled on about her "not really" boyfriend to a guy at a clock shop.
Chapter 47
"With his power over time, Dor could have taken anything he desired from this new world. But a man who can take anything will find most things unsatisfying."
Chapter 48
Is Victor supposed to symbolize a "modern" Nim, and Sarah supposed to symbolize a "modern" Allie?
Chapter 49
"Some of them she had seen for four years without exchanging a word. But that was how high school worked; it issued a verdict and you behaved accordingly."
--Do you know of anyone that was in our class that you literally never talked to, not even for a class assignment?
Chapter 52
"Even after the funeral, young Victor wondered if his father might return one day, magically, as if all this—the priest, the weeping family, the wooden casket—was just some phase you went through when adults had accidents."
"'Please make it yesterday, when Papa came home.' In a cave, far away, the boy’s words wafted up through a glowing pool. There were millions of other voices, but the pleas of a child find our ears differently, and Dor was moved by the simple request. Children so rarely ask to reverse time. Mostly they are in a hurry. They want a school bell to ring. A birthday to arrive. “Please make it yesterday.”
"He did not know that the child who had asked for yesterday was now seeking to own tomorrow."
"Once his mother leapt from that bridge, he gave up on prayer, he gave up on yesterdays. He came to America and learned that those who made the most of their time prospered. So he worked. He sped up his life."
"We all yearn for what we have lost. But sometimes, we forget what we have."
Letting Go
Chapter 57
"Yet despite all they accomplished, they were never at peace."
Chapter 59
"...common sense has no place in first love and never has."
"Speed now trumped the quality of words. "
New Year’s Eve
Chapter 61
"...when hope is gone, time is punishment."
Stillness
Chapter 68
"They divorced when Sarah was twelve. Lorraine got the house, the furniture, all the ice cream bars she wanted, and full-time custody of their only child. Tom got a hair transplant, a boat, and a young female friend named Melissa, who had no interest in spending time with someone else’s daughter."
"The less her father called, the more she ached for him; the more her mother hugged her, the less she wanted the embrace. She looked like her mother and she sounded like her mother, and by eighth grade, she began to feel like her mother, unloved or perhaps unlovable. She ate too much and she put on weight, and she distanced herself from other kids and stayed inside studying because her father had admired that and maybe deep down she thought it would bring them closer."
"She would drop the world for Ethan. She had."
Chapter 69
"'I prefer them broken.'
"'Why is that?'
"'Because I am the sinner who created them.'”
Future
Chapter 70
"When we are most alone is when we embrace another’s loneliness."
Chapter 71
Thinks started to get a little "Christmas Carol"-y in this chapter. It is the best way to show someone their own importance but man, that cheese. I am, however, glad that Ethan's character was an ass through and through and didn't "turn over a new leaf" and be this great guy after Sarah was gone.
Chapter 73
"He felt suddenly embarrassed, not only by the manipulation of his death, but by the ratty condolence chair his wife was being offered."
"In his race to cheat death, he’d trusted scientists more than his wife. He had denied her their final intimacy. He had not even left a body to bury. How would she grieve him now?"
Chapter 75
“'What are they all doing?'
“'Watching your memories.'
“'Why?'
“'To remember how to feel.'”
"'Everyone in this time can live longer than we imagined,' Dor explained. 'They fill every waking minute with action, but they are empty. To them, you are an artifact. And your memories are rare. You are a reminder of a simpler, more satisfying world. One they no longer know.'”
"'Do you understand now?' he asked. 'With endless time, nothing is special. With no loss or sacrifice, we can’t appreciate what we have. There is a reason God limits our days.'
"'Why?'
"'To make each one precious.'”
Even though the part of Victor being wired to screens to show his memories to this unfeeling world is meant to be a warning, I think it would be awesome. Not to be the shriveled up creature in a cryonics tube, but to put your memories to screen, and autobiography you never have to write. What a dream come true.
Chapter 76
"...once we began to chime the hour, we lost the ability to be satisfied."
Chapter 79
"We do not realize the sound the world makes—unless, of course, it comes to a stop. Then, when it starts, it sounds like an orchestra. Breaking waves. Whipping wind. Falling rain. Squawking birds. All throughout the universe, time resumed and nature sang."
"Only when the rocks looked familiar, only when he saw the hut made of reeds, did he slow his pace, as man does when he approaches what he desires, uncertain if it can possibly be all he hoped. Dare he look? All that he had dreamed of? All that had sustained him for an eternity?"
Epilogue
Chapter 81
I usually mock "happily ever after" endings but I love this one. I love that Victor pays for Sarah's college, because he and his wife never had kids. I love that Sarah goes to become a doctor and cures cancer. I love that the "cave" is actually underneath an apartment in Manhattan. I love that Dor ends up with his wife in their own special Heaven. I love it so much.
Prologue
Chapter 1
"Voices. Endless voices. ... They want one thing only. Time."
Beginning
Chapter 2
I am going to try not to jot too much down but I love Mitch Albom's writing
"This is often the way it is between girls and boys. For these two, it is the way it will always be."
"And on this early page of man’s story, one different child can change the world."
"Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. ... Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out."
Chapter 6
"There are as many expressions with “time” as there are minutes in a day. But once, there was no word for it at all. Because no one was counting."
Chapter 8
I almost laughed out loud about Victor calling research thinking that, just because he is rich, he can find the answer for Immortality.
Chapter 9
"Nim was wrong. There was no divine battle between day and night. Dor had captured them both in a bowl."
Chapter 10
I don't come from a family of divorce, so maybe I don't have any right to say, but I hate when parents in books or movies let their kids get away with anything, as if not having rules will make their kids forget that mom and dad don't love each other any more.
Chapter 15
"...he begged the most high gods—the ones that ruled over the sun and moon—to stop everything, to keep the world dark, to let his water clock overflow. But when he allowed his eyelids the slightest lift, he saw what he dreaded, the first change of colors on the horizon. He saw the bowl was nearly to the notch of day. He saw that his measures were accurate, and he hated that they were accurate...”
Tyler, (or anyone I suppose), do you know the story of the Tower of Babel? Are the names and stories accurate in this book? I only know the part about the tower falling and creating language barriers.
Cave
Chapter 17
"'No. In this cave, you will not age a moment.'
"Dor looked away, ashamed.
"'I deserve no such gift'
"'It is not a gift,' the old man said."
“Soon man will count all his days, and then smaller segments of the day, and then smaller still—until the counting consumes him, and the wonder of the world he has been given is lost.”
Chapter 18
I like that Ethan is a "popular kid" who still helps at a homeless shelter, even if he probably only does it because his dad asks him to.
Chapter 19
"...holding onto things will only break your heart.”
Chapter 22
"Like other men of enormous power, Victor could not imagine the world without him. He felt almost obligated to stay alive."
--This line made me think of Donald Trump.
Chapter 23
"he sensed by the sheer volume that Earth had become a very crowded place, and mankind did much more than hunt or build; it labored, it traveled, it made war, it despaired. And it never had enough time."
The In-Between
Chapter 25
It does seem super weird that if you have your body frozen, you get put in upside down. And that there are 6 people to a tank.
Chapter 26
"The rain mixes with gas. The new acidic water eats through rocks, and tiny fractures grow into passageways. Eventually—after many thousands of years—these passageways might create an opening large enough for a man. So Dor’s cave was already a product of time."
--I just thought this was an interesting thing to know (something I don't believe I ever learned in school) and also a lovely metaphor.
"Once, he had prided himself on keeping time with water. But man invents nothing God did not create first. Dor was living in the biggest water clock of all."
"Not aging is not the same as living, and without human contact, his soul dried up."
"As the voices from Earth increased exponentially, Dor heard them without distinction, the way one hears falling raindrops."
--I always imagined that's how God feels about people praying. But that he had the power to hone in on specific voices if he wanted to. Which is why I always felt guilty praying about stupid things.
"He was doing what man does when left with nothing. He was telling himself his own life story."
Chapter 27
"She remembered a time when he’d kiss her at the door, lift her a few inches off the ground and spoil her with questions like “Where do you want to go this weekend? London? Paris?” Once, on the balcony of a seaside villa, she said she wished she’d met him earlier in life, and he said, “We’re gonna make up for that. We’re gonna live a long time together.” She reminded herself there were moments like that once, and that she had to be patient now, more compassionate; she could not know what he was feeling inside—the dwindling days, the impending death. However cranky or distant he got, she was determined to make the little time they had left more like the start of their life together, and less like the vast, joyless middle. She did not know, as Victor disappeared into his study, that he was thinking about another life altogether."
Falling
Chapter 29
“You marked the minutes,” the old man said. “But did you use them wisely? To be still? To cherish? To be grateful? To lift and be lifted?”
“What difference could two people make?”
“You were one person,” the old man said. “And you changed the world.”
Chapter 30
"After Ethan’s cancellation, Sarah might have thought twice about another date. But a desperate heart will seduce the mind."
Chapter 31
I never thought the idea of freezing your body was creepy (not for me, but not creepy) until reading the details in this book. Fuck that, I'll die when I die, thank you very much.
Earth
Chapter 34
Why would Dor come to earth and basically take over the form of a pinata?
Chapter 35
I hate this whole "Sarah wears make up to impress Ethan ... and it works! Sarah knows to pretend to like vodka. Sarah lies about movies she likes." I guess it is "real" but it's also super annoying haha
"She realized Ethan was a better-looking boy than she was a girl, and she pondered how much “gratitude” she was supposed to show him for that. They’d kissed—a lot—and he’d wanted her. Somebody wanted her. That was what mattered."
--Oh god...yep, this was my exact mentality in high school. (And to be honest sometimes it still is).
Chapter 36
"six thousand years of hair" holy shit.
Chapter 38
"Dor thought about the centuries he had been made to suffer in the cave. He wondered if every clock watcher pays some kind of price."
"His education concerning the modern world was complete. Dor had spent one hundred years observing a single day."
--I've never really thought about controlling time, but, for real, even if you couldn't go back in time, the ability to slow time down to such a degree that you could read a third of a library in less than a day. Damn.
Chapter 39
"As he walked between the massive skyscrapers, he was reminded of Nim’s tower. He wondered if there were no end to man’s ambitions."
City
Chapter 40
"Then a French mathematician tied a string to a timepiece, put it around his wrist, and man began to wear time on his body."
Chapter 42
"Sometimes, when you are not getting the love you want, giving makes you think you will."
--Again, fuck me for relating to the most pathetic character in this book.
Chapter 46
It is so awkward that Sarah just rambled on about her "not really" boyfriend to a guy at a clock shop.
Chapter 47
"With his power over time, Dor could have taken anything he desired from this new world. But a man who can take anything will find most things unsatisfying."
Chapter 48
Is Victor supposed to symbolize a "modern" Nim, and Sarah supposed to symbolize a "modern" Allie?
Chapter 49
"Some of them she had seen for four years without exchanging a word. But that was how high school worked; it issued a verdict and you behaved accordingly."
--Do you know of anyone that was in our class that you literally never talked to, not even for a class assignment?
Chapter 52
"Even after the funeral, young Victor wondered if his father might return one day, magically, as if all this—the priest, the weeping family, the wooden casket—was just some phase you went through when adults had accidents."
"'Please make it yesterday, when Papa came home.' In a cave, far away, the boy’s words wafted up through a glowing pool. There were millions of other voices, but the pleas of a child find our ears differently, and Dor was moved by the simple request. Children so rarely ask to reverse time. Mostly they are in a hurry. They want a school bell to ring. A birthday to arrive. “Please make it yesterday.”
"He did not know that the child who had asked for yesterday was now seeking to own tomorrow."
"Once his mother leapt from that bridge, he gave up on prayer, he gave up on yesterdays. He came to America and learned that those who made the most of their time prospered. So he worked. He sped up his life."
"We all yearn for what we have lost. But sometimes, we forget what we have."
Letting Go
Chapter 57
"Yet despite all they accomplished, they were never at peace."
Chapter 59
"...common sense has no place in first love and never has."
"Speed now trumped the quality of words. "
New Year’s Eve
Chapter 61
"...when hope is gone, time is punishment."
Stillness
Chapter 68
"They divorced when Sarah was twelve. Lorraine got the house, the furniture, all the ice cream bars she wanted, and full-time custody of their only child. Tom got a hair transplant, a boat, and a young female friend named Melissa, who had no interest in spending time with someone else’s daughter."
"The less her father called, the more she ached for him; the more her mother hugged her, the less she wanted the embrace. She looked like her mother and she sounded like her mother, and by eighth grade, she began to feel like her mother, unloved or perhaps unlovable. She ate too much and she put on weight, and she distanced herself from other kids and stayed inside studying because her father had admired that and maybe deep down she thought it would bring them closer."
"She would drop the world for Ethan. She had."
Chapter 69
"'I prefer them broken.'
"'Why is that?'
"'Because I am the sinner who created them.'”
Future
Chapter 70
"When we are most alone is when we embrace another’s loneliness."
Chapter 71
Thinks started to get a little "Christmas Carol"-y in this chapter. It is the best way to show someone their own importance but man, that cheese. I am, however, glad that Ethan's character was an ass through and through and didn't "turn over a new leaf" and be this great guy after Sarah was gone.
Chapter 73
"He felt suddenly embarrassed, not only by the manipulation of his death, but by the ratty condolence chair his wife was being offered."
"In his race to cheat death, he’d trusted scientists more than his wife. He had denied her their final intimacy. He had not even left a body to bury. How would she grieve him now?"
Chapter 75
“'What are they all doing?'
“'Watching your memories.'
“'Why?'
“'To remember how to feel.'”
"'Everyone in this time can live longer than we imagined,' Dor explained. 'They fill every waking minute with action, but they are empty. To them, you are an artifact. And your memories are rare. You are a reminder of a simpler, more satisfying world. One they no longer know.'”
"'Do you understand now?' he asked. 'With endless time, nothing is special. With no loss or sacrifice, we can’t appreciate what we have. There is a reason God limits our days.'
"'Why?'
"'To make each one precious.'”
Even though the part of Victor being wired to screens to show his memories to this unfeeling world is meant to be a warning, I think it would be awesome. Not to be the shriveled up creature in a cryonics tube, but to put your memories to screen, and autobiography you never have to write. What a dream come true.
Chapter 76
"...once we began to chime the hour, we lost the ability to be satisfied."
Chapter 79
"We do not realize the sound the world makes—unless, of course, it comes to a stop. Then, when it starts, it sounds like an orchestra. Breaking waves. Whipping wind. Falling rain. Squawking birds. All throughout the universe, time resumed and nature sang."
"Only when the rocks looked familiar, only when he saw the hut made of reeds, did he slow his pace, as man does when he approaches what he desires, uncertain if it can possibly be all he hoped. Dare he look? All that he had dreamed of? All that had sustained him for an eternity?"
Epilogue
Chapter 81
I usually mock "happily ever after" endings but I love this one. I love that Victor pays for Sarah's college, because he and his wife never had kids. I love that Sarah goes to become a doctor and cures cancer. I love that the "cave" is actually underneath an apartment in Manhattan. I love that Dor ends up with his wife in their own special Heaven. I love it so much.
Saturday, October 24, 2015
20th Meet Up - October 2015
Had a smaller turnout for our Halloween themed book club meeting where we discussed "The Reader" by Bernhard Schlink. We three loved the book and are more than willing to discuss the book again / further at our next meet up in November!
I also hosted a Halloween Party the day of our Meet-Up and met two new people I hope will be joining us in the near future, Brooke and Megan!
Sam Review's "The Reader" by Bernhard Schlink - October 2015
Sam's Notes Taken Along the Way
Part One, Chapter Three
I appreciate the smooth, but not excessive, descriptions of this author.
When did we as a society stop ironing our clothes as part of the laundry ritual? I know my grandma still does it, but my mom only ever did special items for special occasions.
Part One, Chapter Four
This is the second book in a row that goes out of it's way to describe a female character as "heavy but not excessively heavy" but in a polite and (almost) positive way.
Part One, Chapter Five
The rationale that going and doing the thing you fantasize about is better than just fantasizing so that you don't get stuck in the fantasy is so weird. Or, maybe it's just the phrasing, since the author is German and this book is translated. "It is better to go out and do it than you always wonder, 'What if?'"
Part One, Chapter Six
I can't determine the age difference between the narrator and Frau Frau Schmitz.
Part One, Chapter Eight
Okay, so the narrator, Michael is fifteen, but lets Hanna (I had to look up that Frau is the German word for Mrs.) think he is seventeen. And she is clearly an adult, but still not too weird, for a little while I thought was much younger.
Part One, Chapter Nine
And Hanna is 36, so a 21 year age difference between these two characters.
I like the line when the narrator, Michael is talking about feeling proud of being with the one your with, despite the age difference and the way it appears.
Part One, Chapter Ten
While I understand the gesture is supposed to be intimate, the idea of being bathed by someone has always seemed creepy and awkward to me.
Part One, Chapter Fourteen
I know that there are some theater's where you can drink while you watch the movie, but they are few and far between. I wish it was more common "Champagne at intermission."
Part Two, Chapter Five
So was Hanna on trial for letting a bunch of Jewish women burn to death in a church where they were forced to work when she, and the other women on trial, could have opened the doors?
Part Two, Chapter Seven
I can't tell if it is creepy or considerate of Hanna to have taken in the weak and delicate girls and treated them well and had them read to her at night.
Part Two, Chapter Eight
It's kind of amazing that after the church fire, these two Jews, who probably looked pretty haggard from the concentration camps, were able to just walk out. The villagers let go of whatever hate they were supposed to feel and just said "These two are survivors, let's warm them and feed them and let them go on their way." I also wonder if that story is true.
Part Two, Chapter Nine
Not that I think the people involved in the Holocaust shouldn't have been tried and punished for their crimes. But it does seem crazy that the trial we're reading about happened 15 years after the fact.
Part Two, Chapter Fifteen
When the narrator is talking about walking through the concentration camps trying to imagine what they must have looked like filled but not being able to, it made me think about 9/11. How, it's a tragedy and a disaster that happened during my time in this world and, yet somehow, I never think that I feel sad enough about it when it comes around, and it makes me feel really guilty.
Part Three, Chapter Five
It is strange how strongly I sympathize with the narrator about not being able to let go. And while I didn't expect him to start recording readings and sending them to Hannah in jail, I'm also not at all surprised that he did.
Trying to imagine how it must have felt for Hannah to receive such a random, large, and intimate gift from someone she hadn't actually interacted with for years.
Part Three, Chapter Six
Imagining what Hanna's handwriting must have looked like, and how determined she must have been to learn it just to be able to address a three lined note to the boy who read to her. So many feels. (Again with the guilt about not feeling things about the concentration camp scenes, but I feel strong feelings about this bit).
Part Three, Chapter Seven
While I like Hanna's character, the letter from the warden brings up an interesting issue. During her trial, Hanna was considered a monster due to the fact that she let people burn to death while she heard and more or less watched. However, 18 years after this heinous crime, she is more than likely going to be released into the world and the jail / community is going to help her get an apartment and a job and they also reach out to other people to help them as well. I have heard this discussion / debate before in other circumstances (mostly petty drug charges throwing people's lives through the ringer) but it is definitely a topic I'm interested to hear your guys' thoughts on.
Part Three, Chapter Eight
Was reading aloud to people something that was a cultural norm a long time ago? In "The Book Thief" there is another circumstance where a young person reads to an older person who never either didn't know how or wasn't good at it. And, I will say, when talking about something I've written I like to hear it aloud, and I like to read aloud to myself (unfortunately I don't have a good voice for recording so I can't do it for anyone else's benefit). But it always seems strange and awkward to ask someone to read aloud for you.
It is so sad that with every other woman he was with they just didn't "feel right" and when he finally gets to see Hanna again and holds her, she doesn't "feel right".
Part Three, Chapter Ten
I was not expectinf Hanna to kill herself and I was very disappointed.
Part One, Chapter Seven
"Sometimes I had the feeling that all of us in his family were like pets to him. The dog you take for a walk, the cat you play with and that curls up in your lap, purring, to be stroked - you can be fond of them, you can even need them to a certain extent, and nonetheless the whole thing - buying pet food, cleaning up the cat box, and trips to the vet - is really too much. Your life is elsewhere. I wish that we, his family, had been his life. ... Why should we children be his whole life? We were growing up and soon we'd be adults and out of the house."
Part One, Chapter Nine
"I am amazed at how much confidence Hanna gave me. ... The girls I met noticed and liked it that I wasn't afraid of them. I felt at ease in my own body." - While I think this is something most people feel when they are happy in their relationship, I think it is more true when you are with someone who is older, or more grounded, than you.
Part One, Chapter Twelve
"I have them [the pictures of Hanna] stored away, I can project them on a mental screen and watch them, unchanged, unconsumed. There are long periods when I don't think about them at all. But they always come back into my head, and then I sometimes have to run them repeatedly though my mental projector and watch them."
Part One, Chapter Fourteen
"When an an airplane's engines fail, it is not the end of the flight. Airplanes don't fall out of the sky like stones. They glide on, the enormous multi-engined passenger jets, for thirty, forty-five minutes, only to smash themselves up when they attempt a landing. The passengers don't notice a thing. Flying feels the same whether the engines are working or not. ... That summer was the glide path of our love. Or rather, of my love for Hanna. I don't know about her love for me."
Part One, Chapter Fifteen
"I put my arm around her waist, and didn't care what people might think of us as a couple, and I was proud that I didn't care. At the same time, I knew that in the theater in our hometown I would care. Did she know that, too?"
Part One, Chapter Sixteen
"What do you want now? Your whole life in one night?"
Part Two, Chapter One
"[The memory of her] it's there, somewhere behind you, and you could go back and make sure of it. But why should you?"
Part Two, Chapter Two
"What is law? Is it what is on the books, or what is actually enacted and obeyed in a society? Or is low what must be enacted and obeyed, whether or not it is on the books."
Part Two, Chapter Nine
"Not that it was impossible to imagine the confusion and helplessness Hanna described. The night, the cold, the snow, the fire, the screaming of the women in the church, the sudden departure of the people who had commanded and escorted the female guards - how could the situation have been easy? But could an acknowledgement that the situation had been hard be any mitigation for what the defendants had done or not done? As if it had been a car accident on a lonely road on a cold winter night, with injuries and totaled vehicles, and no one knowing what to do? That is how one could imagine what Hanna was describing but nobody was willing to look at it in such terms."
Part Two, Chapter Ten
"Could Hanna's shame at being illiterate be sufficient reason for her behavior at the trail or in the camp? To accept exposure as a criminal for fear for being exposed as an illiterate?"
"She was not pursuing her own interests, but fighting for her own truth, her own justice. Because she always had to dissimulate somewhat, and could never be completely candid, it was a pitiful truth and a pitiful justice, but it was hers, and the struggle for it was her struggle."
"And if I was not guilty because one cannot be guilty of betraying a criminal, then I was guilty of having loved a criminal."
Part Two, Chapter Twelve
"With adults, I see absolutely no justification for setting other people's views of what is good for them above their own ideas of what is good for themselves."
"Not even if they themselves are happy about it later?"
He shook his head. "We're not talking about happiness, we're talking about dignity and freedom. Even as a little boy, you knew the difference. It was no comfort to you that your mother was always right.
..."If one knows what is good for another person who in turn is blind to it, then one must try to open his eyes. One has to leave him the last word, but one must talk to him, to him and not to someone else behind his back."
Part Two, Chapter Sixteen
"I wasn't really concerned with justice. I couldn't leave Hanna the way she was, or wanted to be. I had to meddle with her, have some kind of influence and effect on her, if not directly then indirectly." - (Even though he didn't actually tell the Judge anything).
Part Two, Chapter Seventeen
"I was sitting in the same place I always sat. But she looked straight ahead and through everything. A proud, wounded, lost, and infinitely tired look. A look that wished to see nothing and no one."
Part Three, Chapter One
"Parental expectations, from which every generation must free itself, were nullified by the fact that these parents had failed to measure up during the Third Reich, or after it ended. How could those who had committed Nazi crimes or watched them happen or looked away while they were happening or tolerated the criminals among them after 1945 or even accepted them - how could they have anything to say to their children?"
"Love of our parents is the only love for which we are not responsible." - I have never really bought into the "You can't choose who you fall in love with". I have always felt that love and being faithful is a conscious choice that you have to make every day. I do believe it is not in our nature to be monogamous, not to say we cannot be, but that it will be a constant struggle and a daily choice that we have to make, we are fully responsible for who we love and for making our own happiness.
Part Three, Chapter Two
"The truth in what one says, lies in what one does,"
Part Three, Chapter Six
"[On illiteracy] ... about how much energy it takes to conceal one's inability to read and write, energy lost to actual living. Illiteracy is dependence. By finding the courage to learn to read and write, Hanna had advanced from dependence to independence, a step towards liberation.
"Then I looked at Hanna's handwriting and saw how much energy and struggle the writing had cost her. I was proud of her. At the same time, I was sorry for her, sorry for her delayed and failed life, sorry for the delays and failures in life in general. ... Is there no such thing as "too late"? Is there only "late", and is "late" always better than "never"? I don't know."
Part Three, Chapter Twelve
"I think [the story] is true, and thus the question of whether it is saf or happy has no meaning whatever."
Part One, Chapter Three
I appreciate the smooth, but not excessive, descriptions of this author.
When did we as a society stop ironing our clothes as part of the laundry ritual? I know my grandma still does it, but my mom only ever did special items for special occasions.
Part One, Chapter Four
This is the second book in a row that goes out of it's way to describe a female character as "heavy but not excessively heavy" but in a polite and (almost) positive way.
Part One, Chapter Five
The rationale that going and doing the thing you fantasize about is better than just fantasizing so that you don't get stuck in the fantasy is so weird. Or, maybe it's just the phrasing, since the author is German and this book is translated. "It is better to go out and do it than you always wonder, 'What if?'"
Part One, Chapter Six
I can't determine the age difference between the narrator and Frau Frau Schmitz.
Part One, Chapter Eight
Okay, so the narrator, Michael is fifteen, but lets Hanna (I had to look up that Frau is the German word for Mrs.) think he is seventeen. And she is clearly an adult, but still not too weird, for a little while I thought was much younger.
Part One, Chapter Nine
And Hanna is 36, so a 21 year age difference between these two characters.
I like the line when the narrator, Michael is talking about feeling proud of being with the one your with, despite the age difference and the way it appears.
Part One, Chapter Ten
While I understand the gesture is supposed to be intimate, the idea of being bathed by someone has always seemed creepy and awkward to me.
Part One, Chapter Fourteen
I know that there are some theater's where you can drink while you watch the movie, but they are few and far between. I wish it was more common "Champagne at intermission."
Part Two, Chapter Five
So was Hanna on trial for letting a bunch of Jewish women burn to death in a church where they were forced to work when she, and the other women on trial, could have opened the doors?
Part Two, Chapter Seven
I can't tell if it is creepy or considerate of Hanna to have taken in the weak and delicate girls and treated them well and had them read to her at night.
Part Two, Chapter Eight
It's kind of amazing that after the church fire, these two Jews, who probably looked pretty haggard from the concentration camps, were able to just walk out. The villagers let go of whatever hate they were supposed to feel and just said "These two are survivors, let's warm them and feed them and let them go on their way." I also wonder if that story is true.
Part Two, Chapter Nine
Not that I think the people involved in the Holocaust shouldn't have been tried and punished for their crimes. But it does seem crazy that the trial we're reading about happened 15 years after the fact.
Part Two, Chapter Fifteen
When the narrator is talking about walking through the concentration camps trying to imagine what they must have looked like filled but not being able to, it made me think about 9/11. How, it's a tragedy and a disaster that happened during my time in this world and, yet somehow, I never think that I feel sad enough about it when it comes around, and it makes me feel really guilty.
Part Three, Chapter Five
It is strange how strongly I sympathize with the narrator about not being able to let go. And while I didn't expect him to start recording readings and sending them to Hannah in jail, I'm also not at all surprised that he did.
Trying to imagine how it must have felt for Hannah to receive such a random, large, and intimate gift from someone she hadn't actually interacted with for years.
Part Three, Chapter Six
Imagining what Hanna's handwriting must have looked like, and how determined she must have been to learn it just to be able to address a three lined note to the boy who read to her. So many feels. (Again with the guilt about not feeling things about the concentration camp scenes, but I feel strong feelings about this bit).
Part Three, Chapter Seven
While I like Hanna's character, the letter from the warden brings up an interesting issue. During her trial, Hanna was considered a monster due to the fact that she let people burn to death while she heard and more or less watched. However, 18 years after this heinous crime, she is more than likely going to be released into the world and the jail / community is going to help her get an apartment and a job and they also reach out to other people to help them as well. I have heard this discussion / debate before in other circumstances (mostly petty drug charges throwing people's lives through the ringer) but it is definitely a topic I'm interested to hear your guys' thoughts on.
Part Three, Chapter Eight
Was reading aloud to people something that was a cultural norm a long time ago? In "The Book Thief" there is another circumstance where a young person reads to an older person who never either didn't know how or wasn't good at it. And, I will say, when talking about something I've written I like to hear it aloud, and I like to read aloud to myself (unfortunately I don't have a good voice for recording so I can't do it for anyone else's benefit). But it always seems strange and awkward to ask someone to read aloud for you.
It is so sad that with every other woman he was with they just didn't "feel right" and when he finally gets to see Hanna again and holds her, she doesn't "feel right".
Part Three, Chapter Ten
I was not expectinf Hanna to kill herself and I was very disappointed.
--||--
Quotes Worth Mentioning
Part One, Chapter Seven
"Sometimes I had the feeling that all of us in his family were like pets to him. The dog you take for a walk, the cat you play with and that curls up in your lap, purring, to be stroked - you can be fond of them, you can even need them to a certain extent, and nonetheless the whole thing - buying pet food, cleaning up the cat box, and trips to the vet - is really too much. Your life is elsewhere. I wish that we, his family, had been his life. ... Why should we children be his whole life? We were growing up and soon we'd be adults and out of the house."
Part One, Chapter Nine
"I am amazed at how much confidence Hanna gave me. ... The girls I met noticed and liked it that I wasn't afraid of them. I felt at ease in my own body." - While I think this is something most people feel when they are happy in their relationship, I think it is more true when you are with someone who is older, or more grounded, than you.
Part One, Chapter Twelve
"I have them [the pictures of Hanna] stored away, I can project them on a mental screen and watch them, unchanged, unconsumed. There are long periods when I don't think about them at all. But they always come back into my head, and then I sometimes have to run them repeatedly though my mental projector and watch them."
Part One, Chapter Fourteen
"When an an airplane's engines fail, it is not the end of the flight. Airplanes don't fall out of the sky like stones. They glide on, the enormous multi-engined passenger jets, for thirty, forty-five minutes, only to smash themselves up when they attempt a landing. The passengers don't notice a thing. Flying feels the same whether the engines are working or not. ... That summer was the glide path of our love. Or rather, of my love for Hanna. I don't know about her love for me."
Part One, Chapter Fifteen
"I put my arm around her waist, and didn't care what people might think of us as a couple, and I was proud that I didn't care. At the same time, I knew that in the theater in our hometown I would care. Did she know that, too?"
Part One, Chapter Sixteen
"What do you want now? Your whole life in one night?"
Part Two, Chapter One
"[The memory of her] it's there, somewhere behind you, and you could go back and make sure of it. But why should you?"
Part Two, Chapter Two
"What is law? Is it what is on the books, or what is actually enacted and obeyed in a society? Or is low what must be enacted and obeyed, whether or not it is on the books."
Part Two, Chapter Nine
"Not that it was impossible to imagine the confusion and helplessness Hanna described. The night, the cold, the snow, the fire, the screaming of the women in the church, the sudden departure of the people who had commanded and escorted the female guards - how could the situation have been easy? But could an acknowledgement that the situation had been hard be any mitigation for what the defendants had done or not done? As if it had been a car accident on a lonely road on a cold winter night, with injuries and totaled vehicles, and no one knowing what to do? That is how one could imagine what Hanna was describing but nobody was willing to look at it in such terms."
Part Two, Chapter Ten
"Could Hanna's shame at being illiterate be sufficient reason for her behavior at the trail or in the camp? To accept exposure as a criminal for fear for being exposed as an illiterate?"
"She was not pursuing her own interests, but fighting for her own truth, her own justice. Because she always had to dissimulate somewhat, and could never be completely candid, it was a pitiful truth and a pitiful justice, but it was hers, and the struggle for it was her struggle."
"And if I was not guilty because one cannot be guilty of betraying a criminal, then I was guilty of having loved a criminal."
Part Two, Chapter Twelve
"With adults, I see absolutely no justification for setting other people's views of what is good for them above their own ideas of what is good for themselves."
"Not even if they themselves are happy about it later?"
He shook his head. "We're not talking about happiness, we're talking about dignity and freedom. Even as a little boy, you knew the difference. It was no comfort to you that your mother was always right.
..."If one knows what is good for another person who in turn is blind to it, then one must try to open his eyes. One has to leave him the last word, but one must talk to him, to him and not to someone else behind his back."
Part Two, Chapter Sixteen
"I wasn't really concerned with justice. I couldn't leave Hanna the way she was, or wanted to be. I had to meddle with her, have some kind of influence and effect on her, if not directly then indirectly." - (Even though he didn't actually tell the Judge anything).
Part Two, Chapter Seventeen
"I was sitting in the same place I always sat. But she looked straight ahead and through everything. A proud, wounded, lost, and infinitely tired look. A look that wished to see nothing and no one."
Part Three, Chapter One
"Parental expectations, from which every generation must free itself, were nullified by the fact that these parents had failed to measure up during the Third Reich, or after it ended. How could those who had committed Nazi crimes or watched them happen or looked away while they were happening or tolerated the criminals among them after 1945 or even accepted them - how could they have anything to say to their children?"
"Love of our parents is the only love for which we are not responsible." - I have never really bought into the "You can't choose who you fall in love with". I have always felt that love and being faithful is a conscious choice that you have to make every day. I do believe it is not in our nature to be monogamous, not to say we cannot be, but that it will be a constant struggle and a daily choice that we have to make, we are fully responsible for who we love and for making our own happiness.
Part Three, Chapter Two
"The truth in what one says, lies in what one does,"
Part Three, Chapter Six
"[On illiteracy] ... about how much energy it takes to conceal one's inability to read and write, energy lost to actual living. Illiteracy is dependence. By finding the courage to learn to read and write, Hanna had advanced from dependence to independence, a step towards liberation.
"Then I looked at Hanna's handwriting and saw how much energy and struggle the writing had cost her. I was proud of her. At the same time, I was sorry for her, sorry for her delayed and failed life, sorry for the delays and failures in life in general. ... Is there no such thing as "too late"? Is there only "late", and is "late" always better than "never"? I don't know."
Part Three, Chapter Twelve
"I think [the story] is true, and thus the question of whether it is saf or happy has no meaning whatever."
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Sam Reviews "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides - June 2014
"Whatever happened now would become the truth, that whatever he seemed to be would become what he was - already an American, in other words."
"Judge Woodward envisioned the new Detroit as an urban Arcadia of interlocking hexagons. Each wheel was to be separate yet united. This dream never quite came to be. Planning is for the world's great cities, for Paris, London, and Rome, for cities dedicated, at some level, to culture. Detroit, on the other hand, was an American city and therefore dedicated to money, and so design had given way to expediency."
"The adaptation [to assembly lines] has been passed down: we've all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into the joysticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of a hundred kinds."
"If they were going to kill you, would they knock?"
I think the idea of a string of silk being woven through time (aka the gene) was a really beautiful metaphor.
"From an early age they knew what little value the world placed in books, and so didn't waste their time with them. Whereas I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar. The only trust fund I have is this story..."
"Society discriminated against women, no question. But what about the discrimination of being sent to war? Which sex was really thought to be expendable?"
"Writing is solitary, furtive. Still, you can only do what you're able. If this story is written only for myself, then so be it. But it doesn't feel that way. I feel you out there, reader. This is the only kind of intimacy I'm comfortable with. Just the two of us, here in the dark."
"That's what reality is. It's a dream everyone has together."
"Ecstasy. From the Greek Ekstasis. Meaning not what you think. Meaning not euphoria or sexual climax or even happiness. Meaning, literally: a state of displacement, of being driven out of one's senses."
"Judge Woodward envisioned the new Detroit as an urban Arcadia of interlocking hexagons. Each wheel was to be separate yet united. This dream never quite came to be. Planning is for the world's great cities, for Paris, London, and Rome, for cities dedicated, at some level, to culture. Detroit, on the other hand, was an American city and therefore dedicated to money, and so design had given way to expediency."
"The adaptation [to assembly lines] has been passed down: we've all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into the joysticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of a hundred kinds."
"If they were going to kill you, would they knock?"
I think the idea of a string of silk being woven through time (aka the gene) was a really beautiful metaphor.
"From an early age they knew what little value the world placed in books, and so didn't waste their time with them. Whereas I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar. The only trust fund I have is this story..."
"Society discriminated against women, no question. But what about the discrimination of being sent to war? Which sex was really thought to be expendable?"
"Writing is solitary, furtive. Still, you can only do what you're able. If this story is written only for myself, then so be it. But it doesn't feel that way. I feel you out there, reader. This is the only kind of intimacy I'm comfortable with. Just the two of us, here in the dark."
"That's what reality is. It's a dream everyone has together."
"Ecstasy. From the Greek Ekstasis. Meaning not what you think. Meaning not euphoria or sexual climax or even happiness. Meaning, literally: a state of displacement, of being driven out of one's senses."
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