Where Books and Readers Come Together
“To travel through Sichuan countryside is to feel the history, the years of work that have shaped the land, the sheer weight of humanity on patches of earth that have been worked in the same way for centuries.”
“Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.”
“There are places in the world where nothing ever happens, and Time stops moving altogether.”
“She was a stone-faced statue when Horace shut the door and locked it. He walked down the hall, locked the door to the front of the chamber, went upstairs, and made himself some bacon and eggs for breakfast.”
“They could not feel my anguish nor see the concern in my eyes. They would wake up in the morning as if nothing had happened and make their breakfasts and go to work or school or take care of their children as if the day were like any other. But it wouldn’t be, and I knew it, regardless of what greeted me ahead.”
“And she was tragical only in the sense that she was great, for she loved to play on the side of Victory.”
“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
A superbly written piece of brutal heartlessness and blatant betrayals on all sides.
Here is a hauntingly good reading of “This Moment is Your Life.”
“The drudgery of the lives of most of the people who have to support families—well, it’s a life-extinguishing affair.”
“Her stare often moved me into speechlessness, captivated me into forgetfulness, and I longed to know what she was thinking without her ever having to say a single word. But I knew such things were impossible for me.”
