Deborah Meyler Quotes

When people say "to father," they generally mean that one biological act - the act of begetting a child. It is different with the verb "to mother." "To mother" implies care. A man's act of fathering can easily be that one seed sown; a woman's act of mothering can take up all the rest of her life. I

These books ... , she begins, and stops. I am frightened for her, for myself decades from now, struggling to retain dignity with two strangers as they take away my books. I can see the straight line to her grave, to mine.

When you take into account ebooks and Kindles and such, we're doing pretty good.

There is the smell, too, of course
the reassuring smell of paper, new paper, soft old paper, recalling each person to the first time they really did press their nose into a book.

We're high on the adrenaline of feeling, even though we know it's fleeting and evanescence. And we're getting worse
checking texts and emails and Facebook every five minutes, always searching for that next hit of feeling, that next morsel of approval.

Americans have all these classes that mean they just know odd things, so engineers know about William Blake and poets know about analytical geometry. She probably took one on Aristotle and the politics of gender.

It seems shelving is an art, like everything else. I decide to do it exceptionally well.

Aristotle didn't have a problem with abortion," she says.
"Oh, well, good, that's a comfort," I say.

I think there is no difference between love and infatuation. If it works out, we call it love; if it doesn't, we shrug our shoulders and say it was infatuation. It's a hindsight word.

I find over the next few days that acceptance is the way to go. You have to bend your mind around from the path it has always taken to a path where your own direction does not matter. You are there for someone else. It is easier if you don't struggle against that, if you simply bow your head down to it, acquiesce, comply, love.

But in this case," he continues, tracing the line of the plasterwork with one finger, "I feel that there is one cliche that sums up my position so admirably that it would be pure egotism to attempt a more interesting periphrasis. Plain speaking, therefore, there is to be.
"There is undoubtedly a strong possibility, notwithstanding the vagaries of contingency and misfortune, that my son might
have fallen - or might, we could say, have voluntarily jumped, in accordance with the ethical codes with which he has been brought up - for a play you have made with some success, although, as I am persuaded you would concede, very little originality."
Plain speaking if you're Henry James, perhaps.

I finish a short afternoon shift that I spent learning about book descriptions with George. It is an arcane system that the Internet is putting paid to, where fair is foul and good is bad and perfect means you are a charlatan. Price-clipped is bad. Second impression is bad. Inscribed is bad, unless it is by the author, and then inscribed is good, but nearly as good as signed. Unless the inscription is to someone patently important - To my dear Laura, love from Petrarch.

I look up at the ceiling, at all the hardcover fiction. So very few people want it. It is operating as insulation rather than stock. The argument rages on about whether it is better to have books or ebooks, but while everyone gets heated about the choices, the hardcover fiction molders quietly away.

Another person closes you off from the world, but without anyone else there you are like a grain of pollen, vulnerable to or open to all these fleeting relationships. After

I don't really see, but I like how his mind works in a different way from mine, in a way that could open mine up.

I say it, and even speaking such a dream is to offer it up for taint. As long as it is secret, closed, full of blood, it is inviolable. Now I've presented it for piercing. Mitchell

I turn to Mrs. Kasperek; this feels urgent to me. Do you know what Caliban says when he wants to take away Prospero's magic? 'Remember, first to possess his books; for without them he's but a sot.

I keep trying, and manage some workmanlike stuff that doesn't require inspiration, and then I check my phone, check my email, go on Facebook. I read other people's posts, make jaunty comments, flitter away the time, profane the time.

Music is like poetry, It can stop you thinking. But it can also open you up.