"Of all the delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most compact; not large and sprawley, you know, with tedious distances between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. When you play at it by day with the chairs and table-cloth, it is not in the least alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very real. That is why there are night-lights."
J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
"More about geography than personality."
Eve on many high school friendships
"Phooey. You live only once, but cowards die a thousand deaths. Mmm, integration of quotes."
Eve to someone who doesn't like dancing in public
"Women need food, water, and compliments. And the occasional pair of shoes."
Chris Rock
"Hitch your wagon to a star."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
" . . . Fama was and is the sister of the giants and she follows only the extraordinary, either the prodigies, or the monsters, that men acclaim, or hate."
* * *
"What is well said is said quickly."
* * *
"Even judgement, when too refined, degenerates into babble."
Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom
"He had neither ever worked nor feared God. He knew less about God than about work. He had seen work going on in the person of men with rakes and shovels about the playground six days each week, but God had only occured on Sunday."
* * *
"Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing ever wonders."
* * *
"Pleasure, ecstasy, they cannot seem to bear: their escape from it is in violence, in drinking and fighting and praying; catastrophe, too, the violence identical and apparently inescapable. 'And so why should not their religion drive them to crucifixion of themselves and one another?' he thinks."
* * *
"I reckon you'll do," [the father-in-law] said. His eyes were bluff and bold, but kind. "All the sanctimonious cuss wants anyway is somebody that can sing alto out of a Presbyterian hymnbook, where even the good Lord Himself couldn't squeeze in any music."
* * *
"When he was young, when his net was too fine for waiting . . . ."
* * *
"After all, there must be some things for which God cannot be accused by man and held responsible."
William Faulkner, Light in August
"You're why cavemen chisled on walls."
* * *
"Come on in and try not to ruin everything by being you."
from "As Good As It Gets"
"Our peaches are getting ripe, so if y'all want any, come on over; the tree is bent over under the weight of so much fruit :) I had a couple earlier tonight; a few weren't quite ripe yet, but they tasted sweetbitter (more sweet than bitter, and I didn't want to give the wrong impression with the word 'bittersweet', y'know)."
Eve in email to her stepmother, "Sugar"
"Milkman was five feet seven then but it was the first time in his life that he remembered being completely happy. He was with his friend, an older boy -- wise and kind and fearless. He was sitting comfortably in the notorious wine house [of his blacksheep aunt]; he was surrounded by women who seemed to enjoy him and who laughed out loud. And he was in love. No wonder his father was afraid of them."
* * *
"Gimme hate, Lord," he whimpered. "I'll take hate any day. But don't give me love."
* * *
Describing 'Lincoln's Heaven', a farm:
". . . and every detail of that land was clear in his mind: the well, the apple orchard, President Lincoln; her foal, Mary Todd; Ulysses S. Grant, their cow; General Lee, their hog."
* * *
"For in Mary's [bar] the lights made everybody beautiful, or if not beautiful, fascinating."
* * *
"Only downtown were the lights large, bright, festive, and full of hope."
* * *
"Even if you weren't frightened of a woman who had no navel, you certainly had to take her very seriously."
* * *
"Bryn Mawr [college] had done what a four-year dose of liberal education was designed to do: unfit her for eighty percent of the useful work of the world."
* * *
"As soon as he put his foot on the first stone, he smelled money, although it was not a smell at all. It was like candy and sex and soft twinkling lights. Like piano music with a few strings in the background."
* * *
"Without wiping away the tears, taking a deep breath, or even bending his knees--he leaped. As fleet and bright as a lodestar he wheeled towards Guitar and it did not matter which one of them would give up his ghost in the killing arms of his brother. For now he knew what Shalimar knew: If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it."
Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
"I'm on the thin side of evil and trying not to break through."
a saying I've seen in both Light in August & Song of Solomon
Conversation on AoL continues:
Damia: Old people still talk politics... young people still search for love.
EviL: I talk politics, and my mom is lonely.
Ahh, "The Philadelphia Story": such a delight.
-
Mother: "The course of true love--"
McCauley: "--Gathers no moss."
* * *
Tracey's view on her first marriage:
"I thought it was for life, but the nice judge gave me a full pardon."
* * *
"The time to make up your mind about people . . . is never."