"I love my body dearly and yet I would copulate with a rhinoceros if I could become not-a-woman. There is the vanity training, the obedience training, the self-effacement training, the deference training, the dependency training, the passivity training, the rivalry training, the stupidity training, the placation training. How am I to put this ( Read more... )

Okay, this totally cracked me up.

Sir Walter Scott's Diary and Letters is well worth reading now. It's full of interesting observations about writing, books (his comments about Jane Austen are especially nifty), of his times.

But here's something he wrote in answer to a question from a correspondent:

It is very difficult to answer your Ladyship’ ( Read more... )

I wanted to talk about a quote from Nietzsche that I came across while reading volume 4 of Anthony Powell's autobiography, The Strangers All Are Gone. I have always resisted the idea that comedy is just about humiliation. There are all kinds, but the heat and the smoke-smog are so intense that my brain just refuses to work. Anyway, here is the ( Read more... )

beth_bernobich has an excellent idea today--posting paragraphs from favorite works. It's a pleasure to read her choices, as well as the ones posted by others. If you have a few moments to spare, go read--post yours.

I posted mine there, but I will here, too. It's the very last paragraph of Middlemarch:

"The effect of her being on those around her was ( Read more... )

“A myth points, for each reader, to the realm he lives in most. It is a master key; use it on what door you like.”

Over here steepholm talks about collecting luminous quotes. Hoo.

Theophile Gautier in Mademoiselle de Maupin (which I have not read, but I got this quote from a description of it ages ago):

"Helas, Les femmes n'ont lu que le roman de l'homme et jamais son histoire." Which can be translated observing that women have only read the novel of mankind and not the history.

Today's writer is J.R.R. Tolkien, writing almost daily, certainly weekly, to his son during the last year of the war. He almost always began letters My dearest.

December 24, 1944:

I am v. glad that you enjoyed the next three ch. of the Ring. The 3rd consignment shd. reach you about Dec. 10 and the last on 14. Jan. I shall be eager for more ( Read more... )

Aside from that, I picked Horace Walpole as today's writer. My set of his letters was printed in 1909. And so many pages are uncut! How could someone not read such delightful letters? But the purpose of uncut sets is to preserve the words for those of us farther down the road, of course. They get loved eventually, even if whoever bought the ( Read more... )

While trying to cool off today I picked up Thackeray's Paris Sketch Book and began reading idly. Third or fourth item in, what do I come across but "the Fetes of July." That means, commemoration of the Storming of the Barricades (or at the time the Glorious Three Days 27-29 July, 1830. Fictionally written up so passionately in Les Miserables.)
( Read more... )

Nabokov on genius and madness:

. . . A madman is reluctant to look at himself in a mirror because the face he sees is not his own: his personality is beheaded; that of the artist is increased ( Read more... )