The intellectual equivalent of a ham sandwich.

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Quotes of the Day!

The quotes today are from John Steinbeck‘s Cannery Row.

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Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,” and he would have meant the same thing.

And perhaps that might be the way to write this book – to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.

but Alfred has triumphed over his environment and has brought his environment up with him

Doc would listen to any kind of nonsense and change it for you to a kind of wisdom.

While he was looking for a question Doc asked one. Hazel hated that, it meant casting about in his mind for an answer and casting about in Hazel’s mind was like wandering alone in a deserted museum. Hazel’s mind was choked with uncatalogued exhibits.

It had become his custom, each time he was deserted, to buy a gallon of wine, to stretch out on the comfortably hard bunk and get drunk. Sometimes he cried a little all by himself but it was luxurious stuff and he usually had a wonderful feeling of well-being from it.

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Quotes of the Day!

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Quotes of the Day!

The following quotes come from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

 

(I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)

 

For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened – then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.

 

The bar is in full swing and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside until the air is alive with chatter and laughter and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names.

 

He smiled understandingly – much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life.

 

But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room.

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Quotes of the Day!

The following are quotes from Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.

He is abnormal. He is not a gentleman. But how magically his singing violin can conjure up a tendresse, a compassion for Lolita that makes us entranced with the book while abhorring its author!

 

You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

 

I was led upstairs, and to the left – into “my” room. I inspected it through the mist of my utter rejection of it

 

“How I love this garden [no exclamation mark in her tone]. Isn’t it divine in the sun [no question mark either].”

 

Please, reader: no matter your exasperation with the tenderhearted, morbidly sensitive, infinitely circumspect hero of my book, do not skip these essential pages! Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me; try to discern the doe in me, trembling in the forest of my own iniquity; let’s even smile a little. After all, there is no harm in smiling.

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