Massive
What I bought – 27 February and 6 March 2013
George looked at his granddaughter’s empty suit. He thought of Job. Satan lacked imagination. To crack a man’s faith, one need not resort to burning his flesh, ruining his finances, or any such obvious afflictions. One need only take a man’s species away from him. (James Morrow, This Is The Way The World Ends)
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What I bought – 6 February 2013
“Italians have made the family an extremist group. The family is the instrument of revenge.” (Don DeLillo, from The Names)
What I bought – 12 December 2012
Indeed, the Republican Right, while it worries plausibly about the loss of traditional values in an era of peace, is an example of the deformities it decries, since historically prosperous societies which perceive no outside threat have been the only ones that have the luxury to preoccupy themselves with discussions about such things as sexual values. The problem, though, is that we have no such luxury. The peace we think we have is only an interregnum before another cycle of conflict. The narcissistic isolationism of the congressional Republicans – who call for enforcing democracy abroad while denying the State Department the tools it requires for our own security interests and who refuse to pay our U.N. dues – comes at a time when the world vaguely resembles what it was before the outbreak of World War I. (Robert Kaplan, from The Coming Anarchy)
What I bought – 14 November 2012
“You can’t be a pure nation anymore, like the French and Germans used to be. At the stage of technology we have reached, nations work only if they float in the larger world. And what you have in this part of the world are fossilized nations, dead societies that have yet to revive. There are a group of young reformers in our parliament, educated in the West. But Georgians only want heroes. These reformers have never killed, they don’t drink two liters of wine every evening, they don’t fight, they have no mustaches or daggers, so they can’t be heroes!” (Robert Kaplan, from Eastward to Tartary)
What I bought – 10 October 2012
And all the time, like pipes dripping, weakening and preparing to burst in the attic, around the house hearts were slowly breaking while nothing was being said. (Hanif Kureishi, from The Buddha of Suburbia)
What I bought – 12 September 2012
He was mingling with people who treated human flesh as pigment, life and death as a canvas, the human spine as an easel, and he could not for the life of him look away from it with all of his being: with most of it, yes, but not with the peeping bit of him. (Paul West*, from The Women of Whitechapel and Jack the Ripper)
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 – 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 – 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)
