the flash

"He has the additional charm of that cool air or detachment that people have who have given up the struggle. But now and then, when disturbed, something flashes behind it, like lightning in a fair sky, which shows that at some deeper level he is far from peaceful. Perhaps in a stronger light he would show some signs of delinquescence, but the fading, still warm, light from the gallery treats him gently."

—from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams

nothing but sparks

"When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks made them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine."

—from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

running away

      "Anne's awfully sensitive," said Rhoda. "And she's bad about—well, facing things. If anything's upset her, she'd just rather not talk about it—although that isn't any good really—at least I don't think so. Things are there just the same, whether you talk about them or not. It's only running away from them to pretend they don't exist. I'd rather have it all out however painful it would be."
      "Ah," said Mrs. Oliver quietly, "but you, my dear, are a soldier. Your Anne isn't."
      Rhoda flushed.
      "Anne's a darling."
      Mrs. Oliver smiled.
      She said: "I didn't say she wasn't. I only said she hadn't got your particular brand of courage."

From Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie, pg. 122

the dividing line

"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was—I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that's why it happened right there and then, that strange red afternoon."

—from On The Road by Jack Kerouac

curious happiness

"Looking at herself in the mirror, with the bright morning sunlight freshening even the blue room of Hill House, Eleanor thought, It is my second morning in Hill House, and I am unbelievably happy. Journeys end in lovers meeting; I have spent an all but sleepless night, I have told lies and made a fool of myself, and the very air tastes like wine."

- from The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

sleep

Vladimir: Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? To-morrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I waited for Godot?... Probably. But in all that what truth will there be?...
Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. But habit is a great deadener.
At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on.

~ From Looking for Godot, by Samuel Beckett

{I keep trying to explain to people what this book is about, and I can't make them understand why it is as great as it is. But I guess that happens sometimes.}

on love

"So, having found a lady, could you not have come to her aid, or left her alone? Why drag her into your foolishness?"

"Love," he explained.

She looked at him with eyes the blue of the sky. "I hope you choke on it," she said, flatly.

- from Stardust, by Neil Gaiman

Paris by night

"One night we hit the town....At eleven-thirty, we drove up to the Place du Tertre, where we struggled past the barkers and milling tourists in the narrow streets. At the Lapin Agile we paid two thousand francs and squeezed our way to some stools in back. The air was foggy with tobacco smoke, and a chap played boogie-woogie on an upright piano. We ordered brandied cherries, but they never arrived. Finally, a man with a good baritone voice sang four traditional French folk songs, and then we crammed our way outside again and breathed deeply in the cool night air. We strolled along the terrace in front of Sacre-Cour to stare down at the city. Paris was serene and quiet in the moonlight, and seemed to stretch away to infinity.
      "...We headed off to the Left Bank, where we found a jolly nightclub called Le Club Saint-Yves....The audience was made up of simple folk, all French, who were obviously having fun. What the singers lacked in voice, they made up for in personality and verve. After the club closed, at 3:00 a.m., we went on to Les Halles and walked around....It was cold and dark, but the vast marketplace was beautiful under splotches of yellow electric light. As dawn lightened the edges of the sky, we found ourselves at Au Pied de Cochon for a traditional bowl of onion soup, glasses of red wine, and cups of coffee. At five-fifteen, we straggled home."

~ Julia Child, My Life in France

This made me happy today. 

"'Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?' He paused again, his eyes misty now, then went on. 'I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant.'" 


~ from The Chosen by Chaim Potok, page 217

new year's morning, under starlight

The night was heady and frosty. There was no wind and the air was cold and still. The stars were brilliant and hung low in the sky. There were so many stars that their light made the sky a deep cobalt blue. There wasn't a moon but the starlight served better than moonlight.


Francie stood on tiptoe and stretched her arms wide. "Oh, I want to hold it all!" she cried. "I want to hold the way the night is -- cold without wind. And the way the stars are so near and shiny. I want to hold all of it tight until it hollers out, 'Let me go! Let me go!'" 


She looked out over Brooklyn. The starlight half revealed, half concealed. She looked out over the flat roofs, uneven in height, broken once in a while by a slanting roof from a house left over from older times. The chimney pots on the roofs . . . and on some, the shadowing looming of pigeon cotes . . . sometimes, faintly heard, the sleepy cooing of pigeons . . . the twin spires of the Church, remotely brooding over the dark tenements. . . . And at the end of their street, the great Bridge that threw itself like a sigh across the East River and was lost . . . lost . . . on the other shore. The dark East River beneath the Bridge, and far away, the misty-gray skyline of New York, looking like a city cut from cardboard.


~ from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith. 1943.  Chapter 46, pp. 403-404, 406. 


Someday I will write like this. I want to write with the same passion. With the same truth.