BRUCE LEE

-Face it, you hate every single boy on the face of the earth!
-That's not true, I just hate all this obnoxious, extroverted, pseudo-bohemian art-school losers!
-Name one guy who lives up to your standards... Yuo haven't said anything nice about a boy since you got over your Bruce Lee obesession!
(Daniel Clowes | Ghost World)

BIRDS

The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The name of birds. Finally the names of things one belived to be true.
(Cormac McCarthy | The Road)

FORMLESS

A formless music for the age to come. Or perhaps the last music on earth called up from out the ashes of its ruin.
(Cormac McCarthy | The Road)

UNSEEN

The unseen sun cast no shadow.
(Cormac McCarthy | The Road)

AINT

Are you a doctor?
I'm not anything.
[...]
Let's go.
I aint going nowheres.
(Cormac McCarthy | The Road)

LATER

No list of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later.
(Cormac McCarthy | The Road)

ROSE

The small wad of burning paper drew down to a wisp of flame and then died out leaving a faint pattern for just a moment in the incandescence like the shape of a flower, a molten rose. Then all was dark again.
(Cormac McCarthy | The Road)

DRUM

The thin drum of rain on the metal roof and the slow darkness falling over everything.
(Cormac McCarthy | The Road)

NEVER

Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was?
(Cormac McCarthy | The Road)

EVER

Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.
(Cormac McCarthy | The Road)

FRESCOES

Waking in the cold dawn it all turned to ash instantly. Like certain ancient frescoes entombed for centuries suddenly exposed to the day.
(Cormac McCarthy | The Road)

FRAME

She held his hand in her lap and he could feel the tops of her stockings through the thin stuff of her summer dress. Freeze this frame. Now call down your dark and your cold and be damned.
(Cormac McCarthy | The Road)

FADING

He thought if he lived long enough the world at least would all be lost. Like the dying world the newly blind inhabit, all of it slowly fading from memory.
(Cormac McCarthy | The Road)

PERFECT

By then it was already evening. Just the slow periodic rack and shuffle of the oarlocks. The lake dark glass and windowlights coming on along the shore. A radio somewhere. This was the perfect day of his childhood. This the day to shape the days upon.
(Cormac McCarthy | The Road)

ENTIRE

Are you okay? he said. The boy nodded. Then they set out along the blacktop in the gun-metal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other's world entire.
(Cormac McCarthy | The Road)

CALENDAR

He thought the month was October but he wasnt sure. He hadnt kept a calendar for years. They were moving south. There'd be no surviving another winter here.
(Cormac McCarthy | The Road)

DARK

Nights dark beyond darkness and days more gray each one than what had gone before.
(Cormac McCarthy | The Road)

LINGUAGGIO VS VITA

L'artista, anche quando rifiuta di definire tesi o interpretazioni, vive del desiderio di raccontare il mondo, si stupisce del suo inesauribile spettacolo e vuole riversarlo nell'opera. Ma i suoi strumenti lo limitano inesorabilmente perchè per poter comunicare deve allontanarsi dalla concretezza degli eventi ed utilizzare l'astrazione dei segni. Ma ogni segno, sia esso il tratto di un pennino o l'uso di una certa frase, è un allontanamento dal proprio stesso obiettivo, perchè riduce l'apertura del reale. Da una parte c'è il linguaggio, dall'altro la vita. Ogni tentativo di catturarla è una condanna al fallimento.
(Emilio Varrà su Joann Sfar | Il Gatto Del Rabbino)

NON METODO

In più di un'occasione Sfar ha espresso con estrema consapevolezza le caratteristiche del proprio modo di procedere nella creazione, secondo un 'non metodo' che rifiuta categoricamente la lenta costruzione della narrazione, la definizione a priori di un disegno complessivo [...] Perchè quello che conta è il fluire organico della storia, che va semplicemente seguito, non irregimentato, fino a un finale che non si può prevedere prima del suo compiersi. Ecco che allora diventano più comprensibili lo stile frettoloso del disegno, spesso più vicino allo schizzo che all'opera compiuta, il furore di scrittura che porta l'autore a comporre in modo quasi compulsivo, anche più serie contemporaneamente, il metodo del suo lavoro che, proprio come nella vita, non prevede la possibilità di correzioni attraverso ritorni all'indietro e rifacimenti, ma solo tentativi di fare meglio in futuro.
(Massimiliano De Giovanni su Joann Sfar | Il Gatto Del Rabbino)

QUESTA CITTA'

-Guardi, La Senna.
-Poveracci. Non hanno neppure il mare.
-Gli Champs-Elysées! Non è forse un gran bello spettacolo?
-Ah, sì, sono grandi. Ma cosa vuoi, figlio mio, è così triste! Mm... Non potrebbero mettere, che ne so, delle palme? Qualcosa per rallegrare? Poveracci, meno male che sono occupati tutto il tempo, perchè in questa città se hai dieci minuti per sederti e guardare il cielo, piangi per quanto è grigio.
(Joann Sfar | Il Gatto Del Rabbino)

ELOHENU

Quando si scrive il nome di Dio, bisogna essere certi che il foglio su cui è scritto non sarà mai buttato. Ogni foglio su cui figura il nome di Dio è come un essere vivente. Quando i libri di preghiera sono vecchi e inutilizzabili, vengono seppelliti al cimitero come se fossero dei vecchi saggi.
(Joann Sfar | Il Gatto Del Rabbino)

TESI ED ANTITESI

Lui mi dice che Adamo ed Eva furono i primi uomini. Io gli chiedo se Adamo ed Eva sono un simbolo. Lui mi dice di no, che è la verità, che sono la madre e il padre di tutti noi. Io gli dico che è un'idea carina immaginare che tutta l'umanità sia una grande famiglia, ma che comunque rimane un simbolo. Lui mi dice che per gli ebrei i simboi, le allegorie non esistono. Mi dice che l'insegnamento ebraico procede per analogie. Mi dice che mi rifiuto di comprendere perchè ho la vista obnubilata dal Logos occidentale. Il pensiero occidentale è una macchina prensile, predatrice e, in ultima analisi, distruttrice [...] Mette dei nomi sulle cose, delle etichette, come per dire queste cose fanno parte del mio sistema, le ho capite. Ma il tempo di nominare una cosa e lei è già cambiata, e il nome che le è stato dato ha già smesso di definirla con esattezza, e ci si ritrova in bocca delle parole vuote. L'occidentale vuole risolvere il mondo. Fare l'uno con il multiplo. E'un'illusione, mi dice il rabbino.
-Sì, ma in fin dei conti, maestro, non è che anche il giudaismo cerchi di fare l'uno col multiplo?
-Sì, ma non allo stesso modo. Il Logos consiste di tesi, antitesi e sintesi. Mentre il giudaismo è fatto di tesi, antitesi, antitesi, antitesi...
(Joann Sfar | Il Gatto del Rabbino)

IL CERCHIO DI GESSO

Vatanen si teneva stretta la sua lepre. Gli sembrava di trovarsi nella situazione della vecchia storia del cerchio di gesso: due donne cercano di strapparsi il bambino, quella che tirerà con maggiore brutalità vincerà, ma il bambino sarà lasciato a quella che ha ceduto.
(Arto Paasilinna | L'Anno della Lepre)

SI STA COME D'INVERNO

I soldati, stanchi morti, stavano facendo il tè, ne offrirono a Vatanen, nessuno gli chiese nulla. [...] Poco prima dell'alba suonò l'allarme, ma nessuno si mosse dalla tenda. Qualcuno tirò fuori un mazzo di carte, Vatanen si svegliò e disse che lui metteva la posta, chi voleva giocare?
(Arto Paasilinna | L'Anno Della Lepre)

IL RUSCELLO DEL CACCHIO

Il pesante apparecchio militare decollò, puntò sulla capanna del Ruscello-del-Cacchio. Una vera battaglia d'inverno era in corso in quella zona deserta, ma gli addetti militari delle ambasciate straniere non prestarono molta attenzione allo svolgimento delle manovre. Passarono direttamente dall'elicottero alla capanna; l'esercito finlandese restò fuori, ad abbaiare alla luna.
(Arto Paasilinna | L'Anno Della Lepre)

LEAVE ME SOMEWHERE

Leave the old town drunk on his wooden stool
Leave the autumn leaves in their swimming pool
Leave the poor black child in his crumbling school today

Leave novelist in his daydream tomb
Leave the scientist in her rubic's cube
Let true genius in the padded room remain

(Bright Eyes | I Must Belong Somewhere - Cassadaga)

PIU' NULLA

Fiocchi di neve bagnata cominciavano a cadere, non si udiva più nulla.
(Arto Paasilinna | L'Anno Della Lepre)

ONE WAY CONVERSATION

Vatanen conversava ad alta voce con la lepre, che lo ascoltava religiosamente, senza capire nulla; attizzava il fuoco davanti al suo rifugio, osservava l'arrivo dell'inverno e dormiva sonni leggeri, sempre all'erta, come gli animali della foresta.
(Arto Paasilinna | L'Anno Della Lepre)

LA PRIMA NEVE

E così lasciarono Rovaniemi. Il mese di agosto era quasi alla fine, quella mattina era caduta la prima neve, ma si era subito sciolta.
(Arto Paasilinna | L'Anno Della Lepre)

UNA VITA COSI'

Una vita così la potrebbe condurre chiunque, a condizione di saper prima rinunciare alla vita precedente.
(Arto Paasilinna | L'Anno Della Lepre)

TRE ODORI

Tre odori aleggiavano nell'aria: il profumo della terra smossa, la puzza della nafta bruciata e l'aroma evanescente della zuppa di pesce.
(Arto Paasilinna | L'Anno Della Lepre)

PROBABILMENTE

Hannikainen prestò a Vatainen la tuta da pesca del commissario, stivali di gomma e un pullover. Le scarpe da città e la giacca furono appese a un chiodo sul muro del capanno. Probabilmente sono ancora lì.
(Arto Paasilinna | L'Anno Della Lepre)

IL CESTINO

I poliziotti salirono davanti, con la lepre, Vatanen dietro, solo. All'inizio del viaggio nessuno parlò, ma, poco prima di arrivare al villaggio, il poliziotto che teneva il cestino della lepre domandò:
-Si può guardare?
-Sì, ma non la prenda per le orecchie.
(Arto Paasilinna | L'Anno Della Lepre)

CERTIFICATO

L'uomo scrisse poche righe a macchina su un foglio, timbrò e firmò in calce. Il testo diceva:
"Certificato.
Si certifica che l'intestatario del presente documento è ufficialmente autorizzato a tenere presso di sè e ad allevare una lepre selvatica, considerato che l'intestatario ha raccolto il suddetto animale selvatico poichè aveva la zampa rotta e rischiava pertanto di morire.
Mikkeli, U. Karkkainen
Ufficio Amministrazione Caccia, Savo meridionale".
(Arto Paasilinna | L'Anno Della Lepre)

ANIMALI PERICOLOSI

Vatanen prese una camera in un albergo, si rinfrescò e scese a mangiare. Era mezzogiorno, il ristorante era deserto. Vatanen sistemò la lepre su una sedia accanto a sè. Il caposala rimase a guardarlo con il menù in mano:
-Veramente non sarebbe permesso tenere con sè gli animali.
-Non è pericolosa.
(Arto Paasilinna | L'Anno Della Lepre)

VERSO OVEST

S'incamminò a passi decisi verso ovest, nella stessa direzione che aveva preso la sera precedente partendo dalla strada nazionale. La foresta stormiva dolcemente, Vatanen canticchiava un vecchio motivo, "I due buontemponi". Dalla tasca della giacca spuntavano due orecchie di lepre.
(Arto Paasilinna | L'Anno Della Lepre)

THE DYING BUSINESS

We ate a huge lunch on the patio by the swimming pool; we went in and out of the pool between courses, and when we finished the lunch, we kept drinking beer and cooling off in the pool. We had the place pratically to ourselves; the waiters and the bartender kept looking at us - they must have thought we were crazy, or from another planet.
'WHERE ARE ALL THE PEOPLE?' Owen asked the bartender.
'We don't do a lot of business this time of year,' the bartender sayd. 'What business are you in?' he asked Owen.
'I'M IN THE DYING BUSINESS,' sayd Owen Meany. Then we sat in the pool, laughing about how the dying business was not a seasonal thing.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

GIANT SPIDER WEBS

Screen doors whapped throughout the night, cats fought and fucked without cease, a cacophony of dogs malingered in the vicinity of each outdoor barbecue-in-progress, and an occasional flash of heat-lightning lit up the night, casting into silhouette the tangled maze of television antennas that towered over the low-level houses - as if a vast network of giant spider webs threatened the smaller, human community below.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

FAMILY PORTRAIT

The first thing that I thought was wrong with this family was that they didn't appear to belong together, or even to be related to each other. About a half dozen of them were standing in the desert wind beside a silver-gray hearse; and although they were grouped fairly close together, they did not resemble a family portrait so much as they appeared to be the hastily assembled employers of a small, disorderly company.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

DOORSTEP

If I was thinking anything - if I was thinking at all - I was considering that my life had become a kind of doorstep-sitting, watching parades pass by.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

OUTDOORS

I was leaving the cemetery when she came up to me. She might have been a farmer's wife, or a woman who worked outdoors; she was my age, but she looked so much older - I didn't recognize her.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

WHO I AM

God, what a situation! Suddenly I felt like my father - I am my sorry father's son, I thought.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

WHO AM I?

You are something that the whole world is doing.
(The Books - Be Good To Them Always | Lost And Safe)

PAINTED PINK

[...] Shiga plays with the axis of time, floating with the image before it settles, before it becomes permanent. The act of creating a moment of frozen time is akin to prayer for her. Now it exists: it is evidence. [...] Take, for example, the picture of the pink house in the rain. It represents a dream come true for Tatsuko (also pictured). Shiga talked a length with Tatsuko, with the intention of elicting her heart's desire: a pink house, it transpired. Shiga scouted Sendai, and on finding the city's oldest house, ready for demolition, contacted the owners and asked if she could paint the house pink. On the rainy night before the house disappeared forever, she did just that.
(Max Houghton on Stranding Records by Leiko Shiga | Foam #12)

AND SHE WAS

'SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY - NOT QUITE YOUNG ANYMORE, BUT NOT OLDER EITHER; A LITTLE BREATHLESS, VERY BEAUTIFUL, MAYBE A LITTLE STUPID, MAYBE A LOT SMARTER THAN SHE SEEMED, AND SHE WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING - I THINK SHE WANTED TO BE GOOD. LOOK AT THE MEN IN HER LIFE - JOE DIMAGGIO, ARTHUR MILLER, MAYBE THE KENNEDYS. LOOK AT HOW GOOD THEY SEEM! LOOK AT HOW DESIRABLE SHE WAS! THAT'S THE WAY SHE WAS: SHE WAS DESIRABLE. SHE WAS FUNNY AND SEXY - AND SHE WAS VULNERABLE, TOO. SHE WAS NEVER QUITE HAPPY, SHE WAS ALWAYS A LITTLE OVERWEIGHT. SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY,' he repeated;
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

THE BASKETBALL TEAM

They were big, happy guys with goofy strides, and they didn't mind being out of bed before it was light - they were going to miss their Saturday morning classes, and they saw the whole day as an adventure.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

BUT

'I see,' I said; but I didn't.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

A SUA SOMIGLIANZA

I calcolatori del futuro prossimo saranno perfetti. Ma siccome per l'uomo la perfezione non può essere che umana (tant'è vero che ha fatto Dio a sua somiglianza e il massimo elogio che può fare a un animale è di trovare che gli manca la parola) quei calcolatori acquisteranno, per la loro eccessiva informazione, un comportamento antropomorfico, saranno cioè portati a prevaricare sull'uomo che li ha costruiti e vuole usarli. [...] Che cosa sarà dell'uomo se seguiterà a perfezionare i suoi calcolatori? Riuscirà poi a liberarsene? Affidata a un calcolatore, la costruzione della Torre di Babele sarebbe riuscita?
(Ennio Flaiano su 2001 Odissea Nello Spazio di Stanley Kubrick | L'Europeo #1/69)

LE PROPORZIONI

Non vi aspettate molto dallo Spazio, è praticamente vuoto. Le possibilità turistiche sembrano limitate. Se immaginate la Terra come un punto e mettete la Luna a un centimetro, il Sole sarà a cinque metri e, per appendere la prima stella del vostro presepio, l'Alpha Centauri, dovete andare a 2mila chilometri da qui. Ecco le proporzioni. Quanto al resto, meglio non parlarne. La natura va per conto suo, l'Universo è insensibile al pensiero umano, non conosce l'uomo, nè la vita è il suo scopo. L'eterno e l'infinito non possono avere altri scopi che quelli che li definiscono.
(Ennio Flaiano su 2001 Odissea Nello Spazio di Stanley Kubrick | L'Europeo #1/69)

PRIMITIVE

In addiction to her dark and primitive beauty, and a substantial loss of weight that drew one's attention to her full, imposing bosom and the hardness of the bones in her somber face, [...] she wore simple, expensive clothes - but more casually than the designer had intented, and the fit was never quite right; her body belonged in the jungle, covered only essentially, possibly with fur or grass.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

CASS STREET

'PENGUINS!'
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

BOOKS VS TELEVISION

It was her belief in the value of effort itself that prevented her from buying a television set.
She was a passionate reader, and she thought that reading was one of the noblest efforts of all; in contrast, she found writing to be a great waste of time - a childish self-indulgence, even messier then finger painting - but she admired reading, which she believed was an unselfish activity that provided information and inspiration. She must have thought it a pity that some poor fools had to waste their lives writing in order for us to have sufficient reading material. [...]
But she drew the line at television. It took no effort to watch [...] My grandmother observed that television was draining what scant life remained in the old people 'clean out of them'; yet she instantly craved a TV of her own!
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

THEIR EVERY MOVEMENT (ANIMAL UNHAPPINESS)

She had her hands clenched together in violent prayer, and her husband held her around shaking shoulders because she was racked by sobs as disturbing as the animal unhappiness of a retarded child. [...] They were big, broad people and their exit out the crowed pew, their entrance into the aisle - where they stood out, so alone - their every movement was neither easy nor graceful.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

NOT MARX

Some people mistake my work for satire. I don’t object because satire is a powerful force, so if the work is seen that way it serves one function. But I don’t agree. The pictures are taken in the spirit of finding myself in the other, or finding the other in myself. They are taken in the spirit of empathy. Emotional, physical, sensual empathy. This work is political, but not polemical. There is potential for the formation of an underlying theme in how the system suppresses and distorts both the rich and the poor, but it is not Marx who chooses the characters in this book; it is lust, attraction, and destiny.
(Larry Fink | Social Graces)

THE HEART OF MY MARTINS CREEK

[...] I moved to Martins Creek, Pennsylvania. [...] This newcomer from the city found himself in the middle of some old-time problems: wind and weather, erosion, flood, right-of-way. In the beginning, every to weeks or so, I'd get dressed up in my tuxedo, plow the road, and drive off to the city to photograph another benefit. At the same time, I was getting to know people of Martin Creek, and feeling less like a voyeur, more like a neighbor. At the heart of my Martin Creek are the Sabatines. I met John Sabatine while shopping for a lawnmower for cheap. I went down the road and there he was, Big John, spitting tobacco on his shadow and into the sun. John's a very friendly guy who likes to impress, but not necessary in a positive way. With his huge hands and body he makes proclamations of I am, I can, I will, often, if not always, in conflict with his true, lazy, lovable self. [...]
Jeannie, his wife, is a gal who never learned to read or write, but she's smart as a whip. Cursing and loving, living in the present with no considered longing for the past or the future, she's an angel inhabited by the devil. Jeannie loves her kids and is a child herself. An ornery rebel, she doesn't follow John, no sir, she leads. But he doesn't follow either. It's one hell of a marriage.
(Larry Fink | Social Graces)

NUMBNESS

I wanted to illuminate and lose myself in the dark spectrum of glitter. [...] I run for the bars - swear glimmers from my face and I start to liquify. [...] I'm aware of the camera's prying aggresion in the midst of flesh, attraction, repulsion, illusion. Later, the drinks wear off, and I share a numbness with the last of the party guests. Staggering out the door, I am drained and complete, in control and beyond control. This predisposition toward darkness and desire is my compulsion; the conflict between angry politics and sensual submersion partially resolves in the silver image.
(Larry Fink | Social Graces)

STOLEN CAR EPISODES

I rebelled, in my adolescent way, by running with the rocks and the hoods, wearing bizarre zoot suit clothing, and fantasizing about stolen car episodes into the night.
(Larry Fink | Social Graces)

JUST US

Nothing is a whim. Time stretches us fat and thin. Its evolution serves to address questions asked eternally and opens up avenues of uncertainty since, save for perhaps objective sciences, answers are never sure.
Pictures are sure. They remain fixed in the moment they were seized; their reading is as always ambiguos, subject to the changing perceptions and intuitions bred by delusion or by experience.
Twenty-five years ago I had hope; now I have fortitude. The Sabatines are splayed across the Pennsylvania hills; John is dead; the family is hardly talking, if at all. The battle of bones and carcasses on Little Creek Road is gone, as is my relationship to that process. [...]
Expectations are lower, and the struggle for true justice has shifted to the status quo of Just Us.
(Larry Fink | Social Graces)

SHAPE OF PARTIES

The party takes shape, then, in a rather ominous space inhabited by introspective beings. [...] A party can be visually defined as an array of individual egos in chance conjuction, sometimes pocketed with clandestine anxiety. [...] Fink studies the poignant intervals hemmed in by the fading and blooming of smiles.
(Max Kozloff on Larry Fink | Social Graces)

OBJECTS AND THINGS

What is uncanny - and a source of wonder to me - is that I am sure that the young man in this picture would have been unaware as to precisely why he chose to paint the objects and things he painted. And yet, from the vantage piont of his old age, he found that he had unconsciously chosen to use things that all fitted in with a pattern that could be seen only at the end of the process. Everything fell into place; [...]
(Christopher Bucklow on a portrait of Philip Guston by Arthur Ames | Foam #11)

LA SCOPERTA DELLO SPAZIO

Eppure, quando sei stato fuori, quando hai visto il sole e tua madre, dev'essere stato bello.
E' stato come accecare. Erano tanti anni che non uscivo da quella tomba di cemento. M'ero dimenticato com'è fatto il sole, e fuori c'era un sole fortissimo. Quando me lo son trovato addosso ho dovuto chiudere gli occhi. Poi li ho riaperti un poco, ma un poco soltanto, e con gli occhi semichiusi sono andato avanti. E andando avanti ho scoperto lo spazio. La mia cella era lunga un metro e mezzo per tre, camminando potevo fare solo due passi e mezzo. Al massimo tre. Riscoprire lo spazio mi ha dato le vertigini. Sono stato per cadere. Anche ora, del resto, se cammino per più di cento metri, divento stanco e disorientato. No, non è stato bello. E se non ci credi non me ne importa. O me ne importa e pazienza. Poi d'un tratto, in tutto quel sole, ho visto una macchia. E la macchia era un gruppo di gente. E da quel gruppo di gente s'è staccata una figura nera. E m'è venuta incontro, e un po' per volta è diventata mia madre. [...]
Alekos, ti capita mai di maledire il giorno in cui facesti quell'attentato?
Forse vuoi domandarmi se mi capita mai di maledire il giorno in cui fallì l'attentato. Era un bell'attentato. Intelligente, preparato bene, scientifico. Non si limitava alla morte di Papadopulos. Dopo la morte di Papadopulos ci sarebbero stati i funerali di Papadopulos e in questa occasione ci sarebbe stato il secondo attentato: avremmo eliminato la Giunta.
(Alexandros Panagulis intervistato da Oriana Fallaci | L'Europeo #36/1973)

MR FRIENDLY FACES

But what did he do? I never knew. [...] Mr Fish was the quintessential neighbor; he was all neighbors - all dog owners, all the friendly faces from familiar backyard, all the hands on your shoulders at your mother's funeral.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

REST IN PIECES

When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time - the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drowers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

MRS MERRILL

His wife was from California, the sunny part. My grandmother used to speculate that she had been one of those permanently tanned, bouncy blondes - a perfectly wholesome type, but entierly too easy persuaded that good health and boundless energy for good deeds were the natural results of clean living and pratical values. No one had told her that health and energy and the Lord's work are harder to come by in bad weather. Mrs Merrill suffred in new Hampshire. [...] Even in the summer, she couldn't tan; she turned so dead white in the winter, there was nothing for her to do in the sun but burn.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

DAWN ALL THE DAY

Once in her room, I sensed that I have traveled to another time zone; after the darkness of my room and the black hall, my mother's room glowed - by comparison to the rest of the house, it was always just before dawn in my mother's room.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

SNOWING ON TORONTO

Toronto is sober, but not austere; Gravesend is austere, but also pretty; Toronto is not pretty, but in the snow Toronto can look like Gravesend - both pretty and austere.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

MINUS

My mother and my grandmother and I - and Lydia, minus one of her legs - were eating dinner on a Thursday evening in the spring of 1948.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

MEMORY MONSTER

Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

THE ONE

'YOUR MOTHER HAS THE BEST BREASTS OF ALL THE MOTHERS.' No other friend could have said this to me without starting a fight. [...] 'YOUR MOTHER'S THE ONE,' he said worshipfully. 'AND SHE SMELLS BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE, TOO,' he added.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

LOGIC IN A ROSE GARDEN

And if she wore cocktail dresses when she labored in her rose garden, they were cocktail dresses that she no longer intended to wear to cocktail parties. Even in her rose garden, she did not want to be seen undressed. If the dressed got too dirty from gardening, she threw them out. When my mother suggested to her that she might have them cleaned, my grandmother said, 'What? And have those people at the cleaners wonder what I was doing in a dress to make it that dirty?'
From my grandmother I learned that logic is relative.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen meany)

A PLACE TO HIDE

In our Federal house on Front Street, there was also a secret passageway - a bookcase that was actually a door that led down a staircase to a dirt-floor basement [...] That was just what it was: a bookcase that was a door that led to a place where absolutely nothing happened - it was simply a place to hide. From what? I used to wonder. That this secret passageway to nowhere existed in our house did not comfort me; rather, it provoked me to imagine what there might be that was sufficiently threatening to hide from - and it is never comforting to imagine that.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

NIGHT-NOISES OF THE METRO NIGHT

Il fruscio crepuscolare standard.
(David Foster Wallace | Infinite Jest)