talesofpassingtime

[talesofpassingtime]

They know that a little snobbery, like a little politeness, oils the wheels of daily life.

Robertson Davies, Tempest Tost

[talesofpassingtime]

But he did not like to have other people taking their pleasure with his gardens any more than he would have liked to have other people take their pleasure with his wife, if that lady had been living.

Robertson Davies, Tempest Tost

[talesofpassingtime]

But they’d never believe it. They’d misunderstand. I’ve seen a good deal of life and a good deal of war, and I tell you, Freddy, it’s a shocker how people can be misunderstood.

Robertson Davies, Tempest Tost

[talesofpassingtime]

When Tom called her Miss Freddy she knew that he had temporarily ceased to be a friend and had become that incalculable, treacherous thing, an adult.

Robertson Davies, Tempest Tost

[talesofpassingtime]

"Music is sometimes mightier than actor or poet, the two most powerful of all natures, combined."

— Honore de Balzac, Beatrix

[talesofpassingtime]

The first thing he said was, ‘You have a habit of turning back, starting a walk and turning back. That is very bad. It is the very first of crimes against life. I believe in audacity.’

— Anais Nin, Delta of Venus

[talesofpassingtime]

What’s that stuff about, er, the man in the mask and the man in the iron street. All he’d done was juggle two phrases about and had the Americans going on about childlike Welsh vision.

— Kingsley Amis, The Old Devils

[talesofpassingtime]

Psychologically, the feeling of being in a box, separated from the world of others, is the number one self-description of mental illness.

— Phil Semler, What is Called Thinking?

[talesofpassingtime]

Her ideas of Juliet, of Ophelia, of Rosalind, and Cleopatra were her own, and she never varied them; the very earnestness of her personations made the effect all the more extraordinary.

— Constance Fenimore Woolson, Anne

[talesofpassingtime]

Maybe Madelon didn’t play her role of fiancee as modestly as she should have; she got everybody including the women so hot and bothered I was afraid the party would end in an orgy. It didn’t.

— Louis Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night

[talesofpassingtime]

"You fat old hypocritical Welsh cunt, thought Charlie. ‘It would have appealed to Joe, anyway,’ he said, and added for Garth’s benefit, ‘Used to fuck anything that moved, old Joe did. Bloody marvel, he was. Pulled in an enormous congregation too. Very tough on drink. Of course, I’m talking now about twenty years ago.’"

— Kingsley Amis, The Old Devils

[talesofpassingtime]

If you had a thousand heads, and the King were to cut them all off, he would not be enough revenged for the wrong you have done him, and now you will be left for more mischief, which God forbid! and your wretched sons must suffer for your fault!

— Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo, Amadis of Gaul

[talesofpassingtime]

It finally occurs to him that it’s more fun feeling than making others feel.

— Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher 

[talesofpassingtime]

And therefore, so long as Emmie had the decency not to offend him too openly, he had the sense not to peep round the corner after her when she left him.

— DH Lawrence, Mr. Noon

[talesofpassingtime]

Good Lord, that poor child’s dress is in flitters. Underfed she looks too. Potatoes and marge, marge and potatoes. It’s after they feel it. Proof of the pudding. Undermines the constitution.

— James Joyce, Ulysses  

[talesofpassingtime]

Jin said—You think your life’s so meta—such a cliche. Get off postmodernism. Conceptual art, Jesus, crucifixions. Your holiness of thinking. Calling twitter solipsistic. It is called connectivity. Your solitary walks. Your one-song soundtrack. It is enough to drive me insane. I cannot take care of you.

— Phil Semler, What is Called Thinking?

[talesofpassingtime]

"Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art."

— Oscar Wilde, The Portrait of Dorian Gray