Latest Posts by alphareader - Page 10

When a child first catches adults out - when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not have divine intelligence, that their judgements are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just - his world falls into panic desolation. The Gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of Gods; they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.

'East of Eden' by John Steinbeck

A person is among all else a material thing, easily torn not easily mended.

'Atonement' by Ian McEwan

Still, despite all this, traveling is the great true love of my life. I have always felt, ever since I was sixteen years old and first went to Russia with my saved-up babysitting money, that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby - I just don't care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it's mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to - I just don't care.

'Eat, Pray, Love' by Elizabeth Gilbert

The armies of the ambitious. For them, the future was like a giant oxygen mask, as if there was nothing to breathe in the present. When the present was all there was ever going to be.

'Paint it Black' by Janet Fitch

That's just the kind of person I am. I'm the scratchy stuff on the side of the matchbox. But that's fine with me. I don't mind at all. Better to be the first-class matchbox than a second-class match.

'Norweigan Wood' by Haruki Murakami 

Police business is a hell of a problem. It's a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there's nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get.

'The Lady in the Lake' by Raymond Chandler

"Weetzie" he said, kissing her mouth. "You are my Marilyn. You are my lake full of fishes. You are my sky set, my 'Hollywood in miniature', my pink Cadillac, my highway, my martini, the stage for my heart to rock and roll on, the screen where my movies light up" he said.

'Dangerous Angels' by Francesca Lia Block 

There comes a point where you just love someone. Not because they're good, or bad, or anything really. You just love them. It doesn't mean you'll be together forever. It doesn't mean you won't hurt each other. It just means you love them. Sometimes in spite of who they are, and sometimes because of who they are. And you know that they love you, sometimes because of who you are, and sometimes in spite of it.

'Anita Blake: Incubus Dreams' by Laurell K. Hamilton 

I will find you," he whispered in my ear. "I promise. If I must endure two hundred years of purgatory, two hundred years without you---then that is my punishment, which I have earned for my crimes. For I have lied, and killed, and stolen; betrayed and broken trust. But there is one thing that shall lie in the balance. When I shall stand before God, I shall have one thing to say, to weigh against the rest." His voice dropped, nearly to a whisper, and his arms tightened around me. "Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well.

'Outlander' by Diana Gabaldon

This is the story of what happened after we all came home, sort of like Dorothy & Co. after Oz. I'm betting you thought everything was peachy for Dorothy once she got home. We forget that Kansas is no safer than Oz. After all, that's where the tornado hit.

'Blood Lines' by Eileen Wilks

It's life, that's all. There are no happy endings, just happy days, happy moments. The only real ending is death, and trust me, no one dies happy. And the price of not dying is that things change all the time, and the only thing you can count on is that there's not a thing you can do about it.

'How to talk to a widower' by Jonathan Tropper