What I Bought
What I bought – 15 August 2012
“Stories have no point if they don’t absorb our terror.” (Don DeLillo, from Mao II)
What I bought – 8 August 2012
“People who claim that they’re evil are usually no worse than the rest of us.” He sighed. “It’s people who claim that they’re good, or anyway better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.” (Gregory Maguire, from Wicked)
What I bought – 1 August 2012
“It is only petty men who seem normal.” (Umberto Eco, from The Name of the Rose)
What I bought – 25 July 2012
“It’s all right. Keep right on lying to me. That’s what I want you to do.” (Ernest Hemingway, from A Farewell To Arms)
As you might be able to figure out, there’s a NSFW panel below. No gold star for figuring out which comic it comes from! I just thought it would be better to tell you now!
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What I bought – 11 and 18 July 2012
“How do you feel, Yossarian?”
“Fine. No, I’m very frightened.”
“That’s good,” said Major Danby. “It proves you’re still alive.” (Joseph Heller, from Catch-22)
What I bought – 4 July 2012
“The parts that don’t matter hurt. It’s the places where it doesn’t hurt that the real damage is done.”
“Sounds like life.” (Simon Mawar, from The Gospel of Judas)
What I bought – 27 June 2012
“The question is can you cure the disease before it kills you? Once you set out consciously to cure the disease, as I did even before I knew the word cancer, you run the risk of catching it. Comprende? Whatever you set your mind to, your personal total obsession, this is what kills you. Poetry kills you if you’re a poet, and so on. People choose their death whether they know it or not.” (Don DeLillo, from Libra)
What I bought – 20 June 2012
For them it might stave off what he could not help but see with clarity: that the world was silent and cold and bare and that in this lay its terrible beauty. (David Guterson, from Snow Falling on Cedars)
What I bought – 13 June 2012
For, if one can ask and receive eternity from God, then we can take the opposite of eternity – time – only from Satan … (Milorad Pavić, from Dictionary of the Khazars)
What I bought – 6 June 2012
“That’s what I came to tell you, that I can’t free our people from the rule of the Romans.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s not true freedom. Any freedom that can be given can be taken away. Moses didn’t need to ask Pharaoh to release our people, our people didn’t need to be released from the Babylonians, and they don’t need to be released from the Romans. I can’t give them freedom. Freedom is in their hearts, they merely have to find it.” (Christopher Moore, from Lamb)
What I bought – 30 May 2012
People often die in the night, devoured by their own nightmares. (Greg Bear, from “Petra”)
What I bought – 23 May 2012
“That’s one of the Devil’s main tricks, of course. Fill a man with faith. What evils, what absolute horrors the noble sword of faith sends pouring into the world!” (John Gardner, from Freddy’s Book)
What I bought – 16 May 2012
It is demonstrably plain that, were the whole matter of victualling the world on a non-national footing taken right out of the hands of the strutting male and handed over to a dozen sensible women who do not want to have their children killed, politics, which are nothing but a glorified form of housekeeping, would long since have been deflated to the problem of running a canteen. (William Gerhardie, from God’s Fifth Column)
What I bought – 9 May 2012
He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden behind the dark mustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother. (George Orwell, from 1984)
What I bought – 2 May 2012
Has the world lost its joy? Is that why we’re in such a mess? (Madeleine L’Engle, from A Swiftly Tilting Planet)
