"'Enduring tedium over real time in a confined space is what real courage is. Such endurance is, as it happens, the distillate of what is, today, in this world neither you nor I have made, heroism. Heroism.'"


Something to Do With Paying Attention by David Foster Wallace

 

"One part of the city looked like Tampa and the other part looked like a medieval asylum."

The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson

 

"A person telling the truth will attack the assertion itself. Liars attack your lack of evidence."

Sea State by Tabitha Lasley

 

"Mourning is all about continuity. A continuity has been broken, and that's painful. But memory is continuous. They've gone and they've not gone. Rooms full of mirrors and aquariums full of whatevers are neither here nor there. That way lies madness."

One Boat by Jonathan Buckley

 

"If you agree to share your life with someone, you're never free again. No one is allowed to say it, but it's true...There are rewards, you know this. There's love. There's friendship. There are children. Intermittently, there's sex. But freedom goes away."

The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers

 

"Stoner became aware that he was in the presence of a bluff so colossal and bold that he had no ready means of dealing with it."

Stoner by John Williams

 

"I believe humans cannot bear to look directly at the face of death, and so have invented the face of God as a shield."

The God Desire by David Baddiel

 

"I require a book of love poems with spring coming on. No Keats or Shelley, send me poets who can make love without slobbering—Wyatt or Jonson or somebody, use your own judgment. Just a nice book preferably small enough to stick in a slacks pocket and take to Central Park."

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

 

"What if love wasn't about sharing yourself completely, about yoking your secret sorrow to another's, but about finding someone who made you forget yourself?"

Dream State by Eric Puchner

 

"Julia took a thin sip of thirty years of history and tasted multiple wars; economic recessions; iconic acts of terror; the rise of consumer electronics; Catholic school; kids are cruel; Accutane; learning to drive; meals every day; global ecological degradation; crying in the rain."

Reward System by Jem Calder