Reading
I forgot that I used to/used to want to put the passages I like of books I've read in here.
The Cider House Rules by John Irving
I think about you more and more, but I don’t waste my time - or yours - thinking about who you were before I knew you.
But would an orphan ever worry that he was spoiled, or untested? Is an orphan ever bored, or restless - or are those luxurious states of mind?
His tiredness made him slightly less cadaverous, but only because exhaustion is a life-sign.
Have you forgotten how to be of use? Don’t think so badly of compromises; we don’t always get to choose the ways we can be of use. You say you love her - then let her use you. It may not be the way you had in mind, but if you love her, you have to give her what she needs - and when she needs it, not necessarily when you think the time is right. And what can she give you of herself? Only what she has left - and if that’s not everything you had in mind, who’s fault is that? Are you not going to accept her because she hasn’t got 100 percent of herself to give? Some of her is over Burma - are you going to reject the rest? Are you going to hold out all or nothing?
He admired socialism, but talking to a socialist was like talking to any true believer. He had heard her say, so many times, that a society that approved of making abortion illegal was a society that approved of violence against women; that making abortion illegal was simply a sanctimonious, self-righteous form of violence against women, Nurse Caroline would say. He had heard her say, so many times, that abortions were not only a personal freedom of choice but also a responsibility of the state -to provide them.
“Once the state starts providing, it feels free to hand out the rules, too!”
“No, not in a better world! In this one - in this world. I take this world as a given. Talk to me about this world!”
But since Melony had first introduced Homer Wells to sex … it was Homer’s opinion that sex had little to do with love; that love was much more focused and felt in moments of tenderness and of concern.
But Nurse Caroline began to see; she had a basically brave and a fundamentally political conscience; and once she grasped the portrait of the board as her enemy, she was most attentive to her commander who had so arduously plotted the board’s defeat. It was a kind of revolt, and Nurse Caroline was all for revolution.
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, ‘whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,’ by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, ‘Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,’ and he would have meant the same thing.
… where men in fear and hunger destroy their stomachs in the fight to secure certain food, where men hungering for love destroy everything lovable about them.
Of the bums:
“Look at them. There are your true philosophers. I think that Mack and the boys know everything that has ever happened in the world and possibly everything that will happen. I think they survive in this particular world better than other people. In a time when people tear themselves to pieces with ambition and nervousness and covetousness, they are relaxed. All of our so-called successful men are sick men, with bad stomachs, and bad souls, but Mack and the boys are healthy and curiously clean. They can do what they want. They can satisfy their appetites without calling them something else.”
“It has always seemed strange to me,” said Doc. “The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, reed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”
The Cider House Rules by John Irving
I think about you more and more, but I don’t waste my time - or yours - thinking about who you were before I knew you.
But would an orphan ever worry that he was spoiled, or untested? Is an orphan ever bored, or restless - or are those luxurious states of mind?
His tiredness made him slightly less cadaverous, but only because exhaustion is a life-sign.
Have you forgotten how to be of use? Don’t think so badly of compromises; we don’t always get to choose the ways we can be of use. You say you love her - then let her use you. It may not be the way you had in mind, but if you love her, you have to give her what she needs - and when she needs it, not necessarily when you think the time is right. And what can she give you of herself? Only what she has left - and if that’s not everything you had in mind, who’s fault is that? Are you not going to accept her because she hasn’t got 100 percent of herself to give? Some of her is over Burma - are you going to reject the rest? Are you going to hold out all or nothing?
He admired socialism, but talking to a socialist was like talking to any true believer. He had heard her say, so many times, that a society that approved of making abortion illegal was a society that approved of violence against women; that making abortion illegal was simply a sanctimonious, self-righteous form of violence against women, Nurse Caroline would say. He had heard her say, so many times, that abortions were not only a personal freedom of choice but also a responsibility of the state -to provide them.
“Once the state starts providing, it feels free to hand out the rules, too!”
“No, not in a better world! In this one - in this world. I take this world as a given. Talk to me about this world!”
But since Melony had first introduced Homer Wells to sex … it was Homer’s opinion that sex had little to do with love; that love was much more focused and felt in moments of tenderness and of concern.
But Nurse Caroline began to see; she had a basically brave and a fundamentally political conscience; and once she grasped the portrait of the board as her enemy, she was most attentive to her commander who had so arduously plotted the board’s defeat. It was a kind of revolt, and Nurse Caroline was all for revolution.
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, ‘whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,’ by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, ‘Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,’ and he would have meant the same thing.
… where men in fear and hunger destroy their stomachs in the fight to secure certain food, where men hungering for love destroy everything lovable about them.
Of the bums:
“Look at them. There are your true philosophers. I think that Mack and the boys know everything that has ever happened in the world and possibly everything that will happen. I think they survive in this particular world better than other people. In a time when people tear themselves to pieces with ambition and nervousness and covetousness, they are relaxed. All of our so-called successful men are sick men, with bad stomachs, and bad souls, but Mack and the boys are healthy and curiously clean. They can do what they want. They can satisfy their appetites without calling them something else.”
“It has always seemed strange to me,” said Doc. “The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, reed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”