Side note - I have only ever lost one library book. I left it in the charge of one guilty party, who will remain nameless, who neglected to return it when I left the country and subsequently lost the book. The funny thing is, the only book I ever lost was titled, The Lost Art of Reading. Weird, huh?
Anyway, when I read, I like to put a little pencil-stars next to phrases or ideas I like. I haven't done this with all of my reading, but I try to stay on top of it. Sometimes I erase the stars and lines, sometimes I don't. I like leaving something for the next reader to think about. I think it's so interesting when I see something someone else underlined before me. You'll never know who they are or when they read it or why they underlined a certain word or how it made them feel. This is my never-before revealed extensive reading list. It's my secret history: all of the books I've been through and my favorite parts of them that stuck out, for whatever reason, along the way. This continuing journey means a lot to me. So, here's a peak in to my personal reading. Each phrase noted is beautiful to me. Enjoy!
Dharma Punx - Noah Levine
- I was afraid
of being bored and boring.
- better to meet
God alone, than with someone who wouldn't understand
The Awakening - Kate Chopin
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
The Inheritance - Louisa May Alcott
Dante's Inferno
Night and Day - Virginia Woolf
- one might
suppose he had passed the time of life when his ambitions were personal.
- Her actions
when thus engaged were furtive and secretive, like those of some nocturnal
animal.
- and here we
are, she said, half aloud, half satirically, yet with evident pride, talking
about art.
Peasants - Anton Chekhov
- the tea was
revolting, just like the conversation, which was always about illness and how
they had no money.
- The old
people, excited and disturbed by the stories, thought about the beauty of
youth, now that it was past: no matter what it had really been like, they could
only remember it as bright, joyful and moving.
- a little
later you remember once again that your life has gone, that you can never
re-live it.
The Bishop - Anton Chekhov
- his memories,
which flared up even brighter now, like flames
Concerning Love - Anton Chekhov
- if i dropped
something, she would coldy say, Congratulations.
- I kissed her
for the last time, pressed her hand and we parted forever.
Diary of a Madman - Nikolai Gogol
- soar away,
horses, and carry me from this world, Further, further, where nothing can be
seen, nothing at all! Over there the sky whirls round. A little star shines in
the distance; the forest rushes past with its dark trees and the moon shines
above. A deep blue haze is spreading like a carpet; a guitar string twangs in
the mist.
Nerd Girl Rocks Paradise City - Anne Thomas Soffee
- This is why I
stay here. This is what makes it all worth it.
- The sign of a
truly great show is when you forget everybody you know exists outside of you
and the band
- a lot of
things that make me feel happy and cozy tend to make other people feel
squeamish and uncomfortable
The Metamorphosis - Frank Kafka
The Europeans - Henry James
- He felt
awkwardly, as if all the company had come in and found him standing before the
looking glass.
- Sometimes from
her air of wandering gravity, he thought she was displeased.
- A woman's
husband, you know, is supposed to be her second self.
- They were
imperturbably happy and they went far away.
The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote
The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
- In matters of
grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.
An Ideal Husband - Oscar Wilde
- Men can be
analyzed... women, merely adored.
- Fashion is
what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.
Salome - Oscar Wilde
Lady Windermere's Fan - Oscar Wilde
- Oh, how easily
love is killed!
- There is the
same world for us all, and good and evil, sin and innocence, go through it hand
in hand.
Beauty and Sadness - Yasunari Kawabata
- As the bells
rang he would look back at the departing year. He always found it a moving
experience.
- "It's
embarrassing to be stared at, but any woman would be delighted to seem
beautiful to a man like you."
- Sometimes his
wife taunted him by using exaggeratedly polite language.
- Her awareness
of her body was inseparable from her memory of his embrace.
- I want us to
cut through our fate and drift along the waves.
The Star as Icon - Daniel Herwitz
- It was her
innermost feelings of suffering that allowed her to connect with her
constituency of the rejected.
- Treated as
victim of her own position, and therefore one among the multitude of the
suffering congregants, she was vivified as saint.
- The public saw
her as inextinguishably radiant, while also in a state of semipermanent
decomposition.
The Dilettante - Edith Wharton
- Was there ever
a young heart that did not, once and again, long to get away into such a world
as that?
The Vice of Reading - Edith Wharton
- The greatest
books ever written are worth to each reader only what he can get out of them.
- It is his
nature to mistrust and dislike every book he does not understand.
- The mechanical
reader is the slave of his bookmark.
Tarzan of the Apes - Edgar Rice Burroughs
- Hope lingered
in longing hearts for many years.
- He gathered
her in his arms, whispering words of courage and love into her ears.
The Tale of Genji - Murasaki Shikibu
- Now the end
has come, and I am filled with sorrow that our ways must part: the path I would
rather take is the one that leads to life.
- I cannot stand
the way mediocrities, men or women, so long to show off all the tiny knowledge
they may possess.
The Ginger Man - J.P. Donleavy
The Book of Lies - Aleister Crowley
- Thoughts are
false.
- The universe
is insane. The law of cause and effect is an illusion.
- Death is life
to come. - But no man is strong enough to have no interest.
- The wings of love droop not with time, nor slacken for life or for death.
- The soul is beyond male and female as it is beyond Life and Death.
- Black blood
upon the altar! and the rustle of angel wings above!
- The mirage
will fade; then will the desert be thirstier than before.
- All is vanity
on earth, except the love of a good woman.
The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton
- Her cook does
the washing and her food tastes of soap.
- "I beg
your pardon," said Lily, intending by her politeness to convey a criticism
of the other's manner.
- She had the
art of giving self-confidence to the embarrassed.
- And all on the
bare chance that he might ultimately decide to do her the honour of boring her
for life.
- She lay in the
darkness reconstructing the past out of which her present had grown.
- I have to
calculate and contrive, and retreat and advance, as if I were going through an
intricate dance, where one misstep would throw me hopelessly out of time.
- And the day
was an accomplice of her mood: it was a day for impulse and truancy.
- She longed to
be to him something more than a piece of sentient prettiness, a passing
diversion to his eyes and brain.
- She knew herself
by heart too, and was sick of the old story.
- Lily felt the
quicker beat of life that his nearness always produced
- What Lily
craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not
solitude, but compassion holding its breath.
- The sudden and
exquisite reaction from her anxieties had had the effect of throwing the recent
past so far back that even Selden, as part of it, retained a certain air of unreality.
- Such
instructions no more make for easiness of attitude than the photographer's
behest to "look natural." - All this she saw with the clearness of vision that came to her in moments of despondency.
- For a clever
man, it was certainly a stupid beginning.
- Like many
unpunctual persons, Mrs. Gormer disliked to be kept waiting.
- underworld of
toilers who lived on their vanity and self-indulgence.
The Kill - Emile Zola
Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga -
Hunter S. Thompson
- early with
ocean fog still in the streets, outlaw motorcyclists wearing chains, shades and
greasy Levi's roll out from damp garages, all-night diners and cast-off one
night pads.
- "We're
the one-percenters, man - the one percent that don't fit and don't care. So
don't talk to me about your doctor bills and traffic warrants - I mean you get
your woman and your bike and your banjo and I mean you're on your way. We've
punched our way out of a hundred rumbles, stayed alive with our boots and our
fists. We're royalty among motorcycle outlaws, baby." - A Hell's Angel
speaking for the permanent record
- the hard-core,
the outlaw elite
- a confirmation
of what they had always suspected: they were rare, fascinating creatures
- The highways
are crowded with people who drive as if their sole purpose in getting behind
the wheel is to avenge every wrong ever done to them by man, beast, or fate.
- panic at the
sound of motorcycle engines in the street and the clumping of leather boot heels
coming toward the door
- He spoke
fiercely of anybody who tried to mess with his girl. 'If she's with me, she's
with me,' he said grinding his jaw.
- "Just
because I have a beard," he muttered, "they want to put me in
jail."
- "When we
do right, no one remembers. When we do wrong, no one forgets."
- For some
reason I no longer have Bruno's card, but I remember him because he stole a
whole beer from me.
- The effect was
an obscene mockery of bermuda shorts.
Love in Verse - Kathleen Blease
I touch'd her
not, alas! not, I
And yet I love
her till I die - Thomas Ford
All that we
see or seem
Is but a dream
within a dream. - Edgar Allen Poe
I love thee
with a love I seemed to lose. - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Death Song - Thomas McGrath
- All around
him, he thinks he must be glass
- We, too, are
travelers,
Companions of
the voyage on the inescapable journey
Still looking
for any
Left-over
darkness
Around the World in 80 Days - Jules Verne
- "Why, you
are a man of heart!"
"Sometimes,"
replied Phileas Fogg, quietly, "when I have the time."
- He uttered a
prolonged "Oh!" which extended throughout his vocal gamut.
- Passepartout
wept until he was blind, and felt like blowing his brains out.
One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
- But like always when I try to place my thoughts in the
past and hide there, the fear close at hand seeps in through the memory.
- When a key hits the lock all the heads come up like
there's strings on them.
- Swimming in that kind of tasty drowsiness that comes over
you after a day of going hard at something you enjoy doing.
- All of the guys were trying to catch Billy's eye and
grinning and winking at him every time he looked.
- There was a cold moon at the window, pouring light into
the dorm like skim milk.
My Life – Piaf’s
own Story, Never Before Published
- For me you were a dream princess. But the dream’s
over. Good luck.
- And yet, deep within me, I felt pure and
desperate and a long way from this degrading image.
- His lips would part and I’d think, He’s going to
make a declaration. But no, his Adam’s apple would tremble, he would swallow
and remain silent.
- The essential thing is to love, to be loved, to
be happy and in harmony with yourself.
The Truth About Organic Foods – Alex Avery
Unhooked Generation – Jillian Strauss
Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Sex and the Single Girl - Helen Gurley Brown
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
Kiss of the Spider Woman - Manuel Puig
The Lost Art of Reading - David L. Ulin
- Its futility is what makes it noble: nothing will
come of this, no one will be saved, but it is worth your attention anyway.
- By transposing aspects of thought and memory to
technology we are externalizing our mental operations.
Lord Byron
Alas! It is delusion all-
The future cheats us from afar:
Nor can we be what we recall,
Nor dare we think on what we are.
A Man without a Country - Kurt Vonnegut
- Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite
hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been
to college.
- I know what women want: a whole lot of people to
talk to.
What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and
they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them.
- Bill Gates says, “Wait till you can see what your
computer can become.” But it’s you who should be doing the becoming, not the
damn fool computer.
- Her favorite reading when she was a girl was
Nancy Drew mysteries, you know, the girl detective. So she can’t help but ask,
“Where are you going?”
- But every day she will do something with herself
above her waist to cheer us up.
- Then I go outside and there is a mailbox. And I
feed the pages to the giant blue bullfrog. And it says, “Ribbit.”
- We humanists try to behave as decently, as
fairly, and as honorably as we can without any expectation of rewards or
punishments in an afterlife.
- Only clearly disturbed people ran for class
president.
Armageddon in Retrospect - Kurt Vonnegut
- For many months following Pine's announcement, it was almost necessary to boil a grandmother or run berserk with a battle-axe in an orphanage to qualify for space on the front page of a newspaper.
- If television refuses to look at something, it is as though it never happened.
Armageddon in Retrospect - Kurt Vonnegut
- For many months following Pine's announcement, it was almost necessary to boil a grandmother or run berserk with a battle-axe in an orphanage to qualify for space on the front page of a newspaper.
- If television refuses to look at something, it is as though it never happened.
More books will be added as I go along. If anyone reading has any comments or wants to talk about any of these books, I would like nothing more!
- He was now singing his compositions in three or four octaves that made you want to drive your car over a cliff.
Saul Bellow – Seize the Day
- So many questions impossible to answer could
not be asked about an honest man.
- Money
making is aggression. That’s the whole thing.
- If you only
knew one percent of what goes on in the city of New York!
- Everybody
wants to have intimate conversations, but the smart fellows don’t give out,
only the fools.
- Then some
fool puts advertising leaflets under your windshield wiper and you have heart
failure a block away because you think you’ve got a ticket.
- He did not
welcome this stranger. He began at once to find fault with him.
- And Artie
also had to remain Artie, which was a bad deal
- None of
these could be mentioned, and the great weight of the unspoken left them little
to talk about.
Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451
- Cram them
full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of “facts” they feel
stuffed, but absolutely “brilliant” with information. Then they’ll feel they’re
thinking, they’ll get a sense of
motion without moving.
- The magic is
only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together
into one garment for us.
- And when he
died, I suddenly realized I wasn’t crying for him at all, but for the things he
did.
- He was part
of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do
them just the way he did.
-“Stuff your
eyes with wonder,” he said, “live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the
world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”
- Threnody
- A Very Short Song
- I Shall Come Back
Chronicles Volume 1 - Bob Dylan
Kurt Vonnegut
–Jailbird
- There was no
movement or sound she made that was not at least accidentally, flirtatious—and
what is flirtatiousness but an argument that life must go on and on and on?
- …making light
of being “temporarily at liberty,” as out-of-work actors say.
- I thought she
might cry about Sarah’s beauty, and how that beauty was sure to fade in just a
few years, and on and on.
- Two top
drawers in the dresser easily accepted all I owned, but I looked into all the
other drawers anyway.
- What could be
better than her receiving a hug from a man who had known her when she was young
and beautiful, and then going to heaven right away?
- “I’ll try,” I
said. I had no intention of trying.
The Poetry and
Short Stories of Dorothy Parker
- Unfortunate
Coincidence
By the time you swear you’re
his,
Shivering
and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite,
undying –
Lady, make note of this:
One
of you is lying.
- Threnody
…Lips that taste of tears, they
say,
Are the best for kissing.
- A Very Short Song
Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me
sad –
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very
bad.
Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a
curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I
think, is worse.
- I Shall Come Back
I shall come back without
fanfaronade
Of wailing wind
and graveyard panoply;
But, trembling, slip from cool
Eternity-
A mild and most
bewildered little shade.
I shall not make sepulchral
midnight raid,
But softly come
where I had longed to be
In April twilight's unsung
melody,
And I, not you,
shall be the one afraid.
Strange, that from lovely
dreamings of the dead
I shall come
back to you, who hurt me most.
You may not feel my hand upon
your head,
I'll be so new
and inexpert a ghost.
Perhaps you will not know that I
am near-
And that will
break my ghostly heart, my dear.
- A lot of these books were too big to read, like giant shoes fitted for large-footed people.
- ...but sometimes all it takes is a wink or a nod from some unexpected place to vary the tedium of a baffling existence.
- ...as if he alone and a few others had the keys to the real world.
- Every time I'd see his name somewhere, it was like he was in the room.
- ...a gentleman of adventure who carried himself with the peculiar confidence of power bred of blood.
- ... a man who had reached the moon when most of us scarcely make it off the ground.
- If you have to lie, you should do it quickly and as well as you can.
Role Models - John Waters
- I saw Johnny Mathis in real life once, but he didn't see me -- the best way to glimpse a role model.
- You've already done shirts with triple collars, but how about one with an extra arm that hangs in the back under the coat that nobody but me would see or know about?
- You should never just read for "enjoyment." Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends' insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick "hard" books. Ones you have to concentrate on while reading.
- And for God's sake, don't ever let me hear you say, " I can't read fiction. I only have time for the truth." Fiction is the truth you fool!
- We are a deviant mutual admiration society.
- The real naysayers who can't see the reverse beauty of Mikes sculptures or paintings should be outraged because they secretly know that his art does hate them and they deserve it.
- I've always said true success is figuring out your life so you never have to be around jerks.
- Fat is not enough anymore unless you were once thin and gained weight on purpose to confuse authority.
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
- and therefore, to show the independence of Miss Thorpe, and her resolution of humbling the sex, they set off immediately as fast as they could walk, in pursuit of the two young men.
- she was so far from seeking to attract their notice, that she looked back at them only three times.
- and from the whole she deduced this useful lesson, that to go previously engaged to a ball does not necessarily increase either the dignity or enjoyment of a young lady.- that it is their duty, each to endeavour to give the other no cause for wishing that he or she had bestowed themselves elsewhere, and their best interest to keep their own imaginations from wandering towards the perfections of their neighbours, or fancying that they should have been better off with anyone else.
- A corner of it, catching her eye as she lay, seemed to rise up in judgment against her.
- A face once taken was taken for generations.
Role Models - John Waters
- I saw Johnny Mathis in real life once, but he didn't see me -- the best way to glimpse a role model.
- You've already done shirts with triple collars, but how about one with an extra arm that hangs in the back under the coat that nobody but me would see or know about?
- You should never just read for "enjoyment." Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends' insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick "hard" books. Ones you have to concentrate on while reading.
- And for God's sake, don't ever let me hear you say, " I can't read fiction. I only have time for the truth." Fiction is the truth you fool!
- We are a deviant mutual admiration society.
- The real naysayers who can't see the reverse beauty of Mikes sculptures or paintings should be outraged because they secretly know that his art does hate them and they deserve it.
- I've always said true success is figuring out your life so you never have to be around jerks.
- Fat is not enough anymore unless you were once thin and gained weight on purpose to confuse authority.
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
- and therefore, to show the independence of Miss Thorpe, and her resolution of humbling the sex, they set off immediately as fast as they could walk, in pursuit of the two young men.
- she was so far from seeking to attract their notice, that she looked back at them only three times.
- and from the whole she deduced this useful lesson, that to go previously engaged to a ball does not necessarily increase either the dignity or enjoyment of a young lady.- that it is their duty, each to endeavour to give the other no cause for wishing that he or she had bestowed themselves elsewhere, and their best interest to keep their own imaginations from wandering towards the perfections of their neighbours, or fancying that they should have been better off with anyone else.
- A corner of it, catching her eye as she lay, seemed to rise up in judgment against her.
- A face once taken was taken for generations.
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