1984

It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one's own body. Even now, in spite of the gin, the dull ache in his belly made consecutive thought impossible. And it is the same, he perceived, in all seemingly heroic or tragic situations. On the battlefield, in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues that you are fighting for are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it fills the universe, and even when you are not paralysed by fright or screaming with pain, life is a moment-to-moment struggle against hunger or cold or sleeplessness, against a sour stomach or an aching tooth.

-(Winston Smith) George Orwell, p.85 (1949)

She's Come Undone

This is a special post as I am using one of my all-time favourite book- Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone. I sincerely hope you pick it up and read it. You'll be blown away.

Like the whale herself, my memories of Gracewood have become for me a corpse I'm obliged to carry. Sometimes it occupies the passenger's seat in the car during long, quiet drives; sometimes it lies beside me in bed, on nights when I can't sleep, or on nights when I can. The corpse is either benign or dangerous. It has the gift of speech.

"You're a beautiful person, Dolores," Dr. Shaw told me the very first day I sat across from him, locked in my fat and self-hatred.

"Yeah,right, I'm Miss Universe," I snapped back. "I won it in the swimsuit competition."

To The Lighthouse

With stars in her eyes and veils in her hair, with cyclamen and wild violets- what nonsense was he thinking? She was fifty at least; she had eight children. Stepping through fields of flowers and taking to her breast buds that had broken and lambs that had fallen; with the stars in her eyes and the wind in her hair- He took her bag.

- (Charles Tansley p.o.v.)Virgina Woolf, p.13(1927)

Hard Times

No word of a new marriage had ever passed between them; but Rachael had taken great pity on him years ago,and to her alone he had opened his close heart all this time,on the subject of his miseries; and he knew very well that if he were free to ask her, she would take him. He thought of the home he might at that moment have been seeking with pleaure and pride; of the different man he might have been that night; of the lightness then in his now heavy-laden breast; of the then restored honour,self-respect,and tranquility all torn to pieces. He thought of the waste of the best part of this life,of the change it made in his character for the worse every day,of the dreadful nature of his existence,bound hand and foot, to a dead woman,and tormented by a demon in her shape. He thought of Rachael,how young when they were first brought together in these circumstances,how mature now,how soon to grow old. He thought of the number of girls and women she had seen marry,how many homes with children in them she had seen grow up around her, how she contentedly pursued her own lone quiet path- for him- and how he had sometimes seen a shade of melancholy on her blessed face, that smote him with remorse and despair. He set the picture of her up, beside the infamous image of last night; and thought, Could it be, that the whole earthly course of one so gentle,good,and self-denying, was subjugate to such a wretch as that!
Filled with these thoughts- so filled that he had unwholesome sense of growing larger, of being placed in some new and diseased relation towards the objects among which he passed, of seeing the iris round every misty light turn red- he went home for shelter.

- (Stephen Blackpool in monologue)Charles Dickens, p.72(1854)

Hard Times

He went to work in this preparatory lesson, not unlike Morgiana in the Forty Thieves: looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say,good M'Choakumchild. When from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brim full by-and-by,dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within- or sometimes only maim him and distort him!

- Charles Dickens, 3rd person narrative:omniscient;intrusive. p.7(1854)

Hard Times

"I'll explain to you, then," said the gentleman, after another and a dismal pause, "why you wouldn't paper a room with representations of horses. Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms in reality- in fact? Do you?"

"Yes,Sir!" from one half. "No,Sir!" from the other.

"Of course,No," said the gentleman, with an indignant look at the wrong half. "Why, then, you are not to see anywhere, what you don't see in fact; you are not to have anywhere, what you don't have in fact. What is called Taste, is only another name for Fact."

- (Mr. Gradgrind to the pupils in his model school)Charles Dickens,p.5,(1854)

The Man Who Turned Into Himself

"What was that line in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories? 'Once you have eliminated the impossible,then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'..."

- (Conversation between Dr. Michael J. Tickelbakker and Richard A. Hamilton at Chez
Arnaud) David Ambrose, p.166,(1993)