Looking at my reflection really did soothe me, though I hated my face with a passion. Such is the life of self-obsessed. I was terribly grim and unaffected, unfriendly. Or else I was strained and chipper and awkward, grating. "Ha-ha", I said, "Coming or going, that's me - flat." I'd never learned how to relate …
What they mean is that manufacturing jobs have gone overseas and middle-class jobs are harder to come by for people without college degrees. Fair enough - I worry about those things, too. But this book is about something else: what goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south. It's …
Continue reading Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture in Crisis – J. D. Vance – Quotes
He made me think of a trained baby elephant walking on hind-legs. His three daughters were awfully nice, though they resembled him amazingly, and on the mornings he woke up with a gloomy view of their matrimonial prospects the office would read it in his eye and tremble, because, they said, he was sure to …
I felt pretty good, actually. When you're still too young to shave, optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure. By the time I was fourteen (and shaving twice a week whether I needed to or not) the nail on my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. …
Continue reading On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft – Stephen King – Quotes
I lay back, resigned, and wished my wife wasn't dead. I wished I wasn't lying terrified in a giant bird embrace in my hallway. I wished I hadn't been obsessing about this thing just when the greatest tragedy of my life occurred. These were factual yearnings. It was bitterly wonderful. I had some clarity. But …
Continue reading Grief is the Thing with Feathers – Max Porter – Quotes
I know it is a lot of quotes, but I did find this book very important and Solnit has a gift of writing succinctly and directly about the things we'd rather not consider. Naming is the first step in the process of liberation. There are so many ways to tell a lie. You can lie …
I loved Reva, but I didn't like her anymore. We'd been friends since college, long enough that all we had left in common was our history together, a complex circuit of resentment, memory, jealousy, denial, and a few dresses I'd let Reva borrow, which she'd promised to dry clean and return but never did. She …
Continue reading My Year of Rest and Relaxation – Ottessa Moshfegh – Quotes
