"But, after all, the only thing that makes anybody interesting is their dedication, and when there was religion they could at least be dedicated to their religion, which was something. But I do think that, if you can find a person totally without belief, but totally dedicated to futility, then you will find the more exciting person."

Interviews with Francis Bacon by David Sylvester

 

"She was left breathless, drenched in icy sweat, but she appealed to her primal instincts to not feel inferior or let herself feel less than him, and they threw themselves into the inconceivable pleasure of brute force subjugated by tenderness."

Until August by Gabriel García Márquez

 

"The ancient Greek word for "spectator" was theoros, from which we get the word theoria, theory. Theoria is linked to the verb "to see," theorein, which takes place in a theater, a theatron, to name the act of spectating."

Tragedy, the Greeks and Us by Simon Critchley

 

"Mahler wrote music to these lyrics DARK IS LIFE. SPRING IS HERE. THE BIRDS ARE SINGING."

Still Life with Remorse by Maira Kalman

 


"Max Ernst described you: 'That woman is a sandwich stuffed with marble. You have to be careful not to break your teeth when you bite into her.'"

The Position of Spoons and Other Intimacies by Deborah Levy

 

"I need you / the way astonishment, / which is really just / the disruption of routine, / requires routine."

Scattered Snows, to the North by Carl Phillips

 

"By the end, people around you will be dying off, and they will be thinking about their own deaths and the deaths of their partners so entirely that they won't have time to notice what you have accomplished, or how you managed to live such a faultless life, they're just going to be thinking about how their wife is dying, or how their husband has died, or about how there's nobody in the world who will love them as much or understand them so well, while you will be sitting here all alone with your great pride over the life you have crafted, and the work you have made, and everything you did to make yourself so perfect and good. By which I mean, not having children, being with the wrong man, having no love in the end, and being sort of penniless and maybe ignored."

Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti

 

"Loyal to nothing my husband. So why did I love him from early girlhood to late middle age and the divorce decree came in the mail? Beauty. No great secret. Not ashamed to say I loved him for his beauty. As I would again if he came near. Beauty convinces."

The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos by Anne Carson

 

"Monsoon cumulus is subject to a phenomenon called Conditional Instability of the Second Kind, caused by the eccentric passage of heat through its various layers and, banging through all that grumous air, I thought we might be getting some of it now."

Chasing the Monsoon by Alexander Frater

 

"As a child I read Jane Eyre, and again later, as a university student. It is, above all, a novel about submission. Confinement and submission—zones of submission. All spaces in the novel are enclosures of female submission...each a zone of submission and indoctrination to familial tyranny, institutional and religious doctrine, and white masculinity. The major ethical event is how Jane will resist or inhabit these zones of submission: the love plot is what follows."

Salvage: Readings from the Wreck by Dionne Brand