Love in the Time of Cholera, pg 166-167

No one described him better than he did when someone accused him of being rich.

"No, not rich," he said. "I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing."

-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez,Love in the Time of Cholera, Pg 166-167

Goodbye, Mick Flannery

"Not to make it all sound vain You lay the man you lay his name but lay no claim." --Mick Flannery, Goodbye

Interview in Paris Review, Faulkner

"Success is feminine and like a woman; if you cringe before her, she will override you. So the way to treat her is to show her the back of your hand. Then maybe she will do the crawling."

--William Faulkner, Interview in Paris Review

What's bred in the bone, pg 328-329

"You work under the wing of the Devil, do you?"
"I must, if I am to work at all. Christ would have had no time for a man like me. Have you noticed how, in the Gospels, He keeps so resolutely clear of anybody who might be suspected of having any brains? Good-hearted simpletons and women who were little better than slaves, those were His followers. No wonder Catholicism had to take a resolute stand in order to include people of intellect and artists; Protestantism has tried to reverse the process. Do you know what I should like?"
"A new revelation?"
"Yes, that might come of it. I should like a conference to which Christ would bring all His saints, and the Devil would bring all his scholars and artists, and let them have it out."
"Who would judge the results?"
"That's the sticker. Not God, certainly, as the father of both leaders."

--What's Bred in the Bone, pg 328-329, Robertson Davies

Sexing the Cherry, pg 115

"Are we all living like this? Two lives, the ideal outer life and the inner imaginative life where we keep our secrets?"

--Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry, pg 115

Revolutionary Road, pg 327

"She was calm and quiet now with knowing what she had always known, what neither her parents nor Aunt Claire nor Frank nor anyone else had ever had to teacher her: that if you wanted to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone."

--Richard Yate, Revolutionary Road, pg 327

Human Parts, pg 133

"If she had been growing out of date and living with someone she loved, who was also growing out of date, she wouldn't have minded at all. She understood that it was inevitable to grow out of date; the question was how and with whom.

--Orly Castel-Bloom, Human Parts, pg 133

Travels with my Aunt pg 50

" A long life is not a question of years. A man without memories might reach the age of a hundred and feel that his life had been a very brief one."

-Travels with my Aunt, Graham Greene, pg 50

The Clown, pg 184

"They failed to grasp that the secret of the terror lay in the little things. To regret big things is child's play: political errors, adultery, murder, anti-Semitism--but who forgives, who understands the little things?

-Heinrich Boll, The Clown, pg 184

The Clown, pg 107

"There's nothing more depressing for people than a clown they feel sorry for. It's like a waiter coming up in a wheelchair to bring you your beer."

-Heinrich Boll, The Clown, pg 107

The Clown, pg 105

"An artist is like a woman who can do nothing but love, and who succumbs to every stray male jackass. The easiest people to exploit are artists and women, and every manager is from one to ninety-nine per cent a pimp."

-Heinrich Boll, The Clown, pg 105

The Salmon of Doubt, pg 45

" Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent adolescent boy, Canada is like an intelligent thirty-five-year-old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson. It comes right up to you and laughs very hard in your face in a highly threatening and engaging manner."

--Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt, pg 45

The Clown, pg 47

"Even the devil's eyes can't be as sharp as the neighbors'."

--Heinrich Boll, The Clown, pg 47

The Clown, pg 29

"For the outsider--and everyone in this world is an outsider in relation to everyone else--something always seems worse or better than it does for the one directly concerned, whether that something is good luck or bad luck, an unhappy love affair or an 'artistic decline'."

--Heinrich Boll, The Clown, pg 29

The Commitments, pg 9

"-The Irish are the niggers of Europe, lads.
They nearly gasped: it was so true."

--Roddy Doyle, The Commitments, pg 9

"The Muse's Tragedy"

"Then there set in a kind of Arctic winter. I crawled into myself as into a snow hut."

--Edith Wharton, "The Muse's Tragedy"

"The Muse's Tragedy"

"You can't imagine the excuses a woman will invent for a man's not telling her that he loves her--pitiable arguments that she would see through at a glance if any other women used them!"

--Edith Wharton, "The Muse's Tragedy"

American Pastoral, pg 63

"Writing turns you into somebody who's always wrong. The illusion that you may get it right someday is the perversity that draws you on."

--Philip Roth, American Pastoral, pg 63

American Pastoral, pg 35

"The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that--well, lucky you."

Philip Roth, American Pastoral, pg 35

The American, pg 18

"He slaps a bottle as if it were a whore's buttocks. 'She is good.'

--The American, Martin Booth, pg 18