On My Favorite Quotes

Still Lookin'.

I'm still searching for that next great summer read where I can't wait to rush home to resume my relationship with fictional friends and join them on their journey towards self-actualization.

In 1996, it was with Bernadette 'Benny' Hogan from Maeve Binchy's's Circle of Friends, who cannot believe her luck when handsome Jack Foley falls for her.  (I can't remember how it ended but I think we were both in tears.)

A few years after that, it was Michael Cunningham's The Hours, in which three generations of women [were] affected by a Virginia Woolf novel. (Wait, make that four - myself included.) 

“We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It's as simple and ordinary as that."
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

In 2003, I was starstruck by Dave Egger's A Heartbreaking Work of a Staggering Genius, and spent my free time at summer camp reading aloud passages to a select few colleagues who sat still long enough to indulge me.

“We feel that to reveal embarrassing or private things, we have given someone something, that, like a primitive person fearing that a photographer will steal his soul, we identify our secrets, our past and their blotches, with our identity, that revealing our habits or losses or deeds somehow makes one less of oneself. ”
― Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius  

When 2006-ish rolled around, I would walk home from the subway with Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close in my hands, nearly bumping into strangers scowling on the street.  About ten minutes after I finished reading the book in Prospect Park (Brooklyn's finest), I ran into the author himself and asked him to clarify the ending.  I kid you not, he signed my copy, It was nice running into you in my backyard.

“I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Most recently, I was addicted to Louis de Berniere's Captain Corelli's Mandolin which, as a close friend and (one of four folks who) recommended this novel, described, is about an "an epic love story" (or ten) that is impossible to put down.

“Love is a kind of dementia with very precise and oft-repeated clinical symptoms. You blush in each other's presence, you both hover in places where you expect the other to pass, you are both a little tongue-tied, you both laugh inexplicably and too long, you become quite nauseatingly girlish, and he becomes quite ridiculously gallant. You have also grown a little stupid.”
― Louis de Bernières, Corelli's Mandolin  

What's next?  You tell me.

(Enjoy.)

[Blog Reminder: Click on Subtitle Above for Article.]