Book Something In The Water Quotes

It is a well-known established fact throughout the many-dimensional worlds of the multiverse that most really great discoveries are owed to one brief moment of inspiration. There's a lot of spadework first, of course, but what clinches the whole thing is the sight of, say, a falling apple or a boiling kettle or the water slipping over the edge of the bath. Something goes click inside the observer's head and then everything falls into place. The shape of DNA, it is popularly said, owes its discovery to the chance sight of a spiral staircase when the scientist=s mind was just at the right receptive temperature. Had he used the elevator, the whole science of genetics might have been a good deal different.

This is thought of as somehow wonderful. It isn't. It is tragic. Little particles of inspiration sleet through the universe all the time traveling through the densest matter in the same way that a neutrino passes through a candyfloss haystack, and most of them miss.

Even worse, most of the ones that hit the exact cerebral target, hit the wrong one.

For example, the weird dream about a lead doughnut on a mile-high gantry, which in the right mind would have been the catalyst for the invention of repressed-gravitational electricity generation (a cheap and inexhaustible and totally non-polluting form of power which the world in question had been seeking for centuries, and for the lack of which it was plunged into a terrible and pointless war) was in ~ Terry Pratchett

Looking out on the second day of our mission, I became aware that in the far distance, there was a distinctive-looking star. It stood out because, while all the other stars stayed exactly the same size and shape, this one got bigger and bigger as we got closer to it. At some point it stopped being a point of light and started becoming something three-dimensional, morphing into a strange bug-like thing with all kinds of appendages. And then, isolated against this inky background, it started to look like a small town.
Which is in fact what it is: an outpost that humans have built, far from Earth. The International Space Station. It's every science fiction book come true, every little kid's dream realized: a large, capable, fully human creation orbiting up in the universe.
And it felt miraculous that soon we'd be docked there, and the next phase of our expedition would begin. ~ Chris Hadfield

Faced with a totally controlled, monitored and owned online world, in which every utterance is immediately scanned and filed away, many have yet to make the connection that the best solution may not be running Tor and eighteen proxies, but writing things down on paper and talking face-to-face. Remember the mail? Remember conversations? Yeah, those still exist. Want to shake somebody out of their online trance? Send them a letter. Send them art. Want to record something that will last longer than a few seconds on Facebook or Twitter? Write a book. The physical world didn't go anywhere. In fact, physical artifacts and experiences have only grown in totemic power the more we've pushed them away. ~ Jason Louv

If you feel safe in the area you're working in, you're not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you're capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don't feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you're just about in the right place to do something exciting. ~ David Bowie

Once or twice, at night, he planted himself in front of the type-writer, trying to get back to the book he'd come to New York to write. It was supposed to be about America, and freedom, and the kinship of time to pain, but in order to write about these things, he'd needed experience. Well, be careful what you wish for. For now all he seemed capable of producing was a string of sentences starting, Here was William. Here was William's courage, for example. And here was William's sadness, smallness of stature, size of hands. Here was his laugh in a dark movie theater, his unpunk love of the films of Woody Allen, not for any of the obvious ways they flattered his sensibility, but for something he called their tragic sense, which he compared to Chekhov's (whom Mercer knew he had not read). Here was the way he never asked Mercer about his work; the way he never talked about his own and yet seemed to carry it with him just beneath the skin; the way his skin looked in the sodium light from outside with the light off, with clothes off, in silver rain; the way he embodied qualities Mercer wanted to have, but without ruining them by wanting to have them; the way his genius overflowed its vessel, running off into the drain; the unfinished self-portrait; the hint of some trauma in his past, like the war a shell-shocked town never talks about; his terrible taste in friends; his complete lack of discipline; the inborn incapacity for certain basic things that made you want to mother him, fuc ~ Garth Risk Hallberg

Miss Lucinda Throckmorton-Jones, former paid companion to several of the ton's most successful debutantes of prior seasons, came to Havenhurst to fill the position of Elizabeth's duenna. A woman of fifty with wiry gray hair she scraped back into a bun and the posture of a ramrod, she had a permanently pinched face, as if she smelled something disagreeable but was too well-bred to remark upon it. In addition to the duenna's daunting physical appearance, Elizabeth observed shortly after their first meeting that Miss Throckmorton-Jones possessed an astonishing ability to sit serenely for hours without twitching so much as a finger.
Elizabeth refused to be put off by her stony demeanor and set about finding a way to thaw her. Teasingly, she called her "Lucy," and when the casually affectionate nickname won a thunderous frown from the lady, Elizabeth tried to find a different means. She discovered it very soon: A few days after Lucinda came to live at Havenhurst the duenna discovered her curled up in a chair in Havenhurt's huge library, engrossed in a book. "You enjoy reading?" Lucinda had said gruffly-and with surprise-as she noted the gold embossed title on the volume.
"Yes," Elizabeth had assured her, smiling. "Do you?"
"Have you read Christopher Marlowe?"
"Yes, but I prefer Shakespeare."
Thereafter it became their policy each night after supper to debate the merits of the individual books they'd read. Before long Elizabeth realized that she'd won the d ~ Judith McNaught

When the point of reading is, as it was for Peter of Ravenna, remembering, you approach a text very differently than most of us do today. Now we put a premium on reading quickly and widely, and that breeds a kind of superficiality in our reading, and in what we seek to get out of books. You can't read a page a minute, the rate at which you're probably reading this book, and expect to remember what you've read for any considerable length of time. If something is going to be made memorable, it has to be dwelled upon, repeated. ~ Joshua Foer

The simple old sailor, with his talk of chains and purchases, made me forget the jungle and the pilgrims in a delicious sensation of having come upon something unmistakably real. Such a book being there was wonderful enough; but still more astounding were the notes penciled in the margin, and plainly referring to the text. I couldn't believe my eyes! They were in cipher! Yes, it looked like cipher. ~ Joseph Conrad

My company, Against All Odds Productions, has done print on demand; we were the first to do a book with a CD-ROM in the early 1990s. We do custom covers. It's always fun to do something new. ~ Rick Smolan

I feel only gratitude. We are doing something as necessary to our well-being as food or air or water. We are steeping ourselves, reassuring ourselves, renewing ourselves, three creatures of two species, finding comfort in the simple exchange of body warmth. ~ Abigail Thomas

Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. So accept madness too. Let the light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you. Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life...If you want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness, since it makes up such a great part of your nature...Be glad that you can recognize it, for you will thus avoid becoming its victim. Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life. ~ C.G. Jung

I remember something Bran said when we were hiking in Tasmania, about how people believe they see the same river but the water is always different. I am that river. ~ Lia Riley

That's the magic of literature. We read a story, and something happens. We don't know what or why, nor which sentence it was responsible, but the world has changed and will never be the same again. Sometimes it takes us several years to realize that a book tore a hole in reality through which we could escape from the pettiness and despondency of our surroundings. ~ Nina George

There was something in the pages of these books that had the power to make him feel better about things, a life raft to cling to before the dark currents of memory washed him downstream again, and on brighter days, he could even see himself going on this way for some time. A small but passable life.
And then, of course, the end of the world happened. ~ Justin Cronin

When I was 15, I sat in despair one day in a creaky old bus that was winding its way through central Mexico (that's another story), trying to decide if I truly believed in God. Not necessarily God with a big white beard looking down from a Biblical heaven, but some kind of sacred spirit above, beneath, and within all things. I'd always had a deep, instinctive faith (even as a small child) in a sacred dimension to life, a Mystery I didn't need to fully define in order to know it, feel it, experience it. But recent grueling events had shaken my faith and closed that connection.

Now, I realize that sitting and railing at God is practically a cliche of teenage angst; that doesn't make the experience any less urgent at age 15, and I was in a dark place. "Okay," I said, throwing the gauntlet down to whatever out there might be listening, "if there is something more than this, then prove it. Just prove it. Or I quit." The bus turned a corner on the narrow, dusty road, and a gasp went up from the people around me. Above us, a rainbow arched through a bright blue, cloudless, rainless desert sky.

Rainbows have been special to me ever since. I know the scientific explanation, of course, water and air and angles of sunlight and all that. But to me, they are always a message. They say: "The universe is a Mystery and you're part of it." And sometimes that's all I need to hear; that's all the answer I need, no matter what the prayer. ~ Terri Windling

One of the cardinal features of the Buddha's teaching is that all life, however solid it may seem to be, and all things, however separate they may seem to be, are in a state of flux. That is to say that the world we live in doesn't consist so much of things or entities as it consists of process. Everything is in a constant state of flowing pattern. By way of illustration you might say that it's something like the flowing pattern you see when you look at smoke: a dancing, constantly changing arabesque of pattern; flowing, flowing, all the time. Or that the substance of life is something like water, which I can hold in my hand so long as I cup it gently, but if I clutch at the water, I immediately lose it. ~ Alan W. Watts

In a place like Israel, they're very concerned with Iran, so there's a lot of interest. So they want to see what this Iranian from France has to say in her comics. I guess that's good. My the books are coming out in other countries. And each time, they discover something different to be interested in. ~ Marjane Satrapi

This was all an excuse, I think. I was doing fine. I had a 93 average and I was holding my head above water. I had good friends and a loving family. And because I needed to be the center of attention, because I needed something more, I ended up here, wallowing in myself, trying to convince everybody around me that I have some kind of ... disease. I don't have any disease. I keep pacing. Depression isn't a disease. It's a pretext for being a prima donna. Everybody knows that. My friends know it; my principal knows it. The sweating has started again. I can feel the Cycling roaring up in my brain. I haven't done anything right. What have I done, made a bunch of little pictures? That doesn't count as anything. I'm finished. My principal just called me and I hung up on him and didn't call back. I'm finished. I'm expelled. I'm finished. ~ Ned Vizzini

Catch! calls the Once-ler. He lets something fall. It's a Truffula Seed. It's the last one of all! You're in charge of the last of the Truffula Seeds. And Truffula Trees are what everyone needs. Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care. Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air. Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack. Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back. ~ Dr. Seuss

Sometimes you're the lamp post, and sometimes you're the dog. ~ Catherine Steadman

We crunched over the gravel in front of my house. It was dark and empty, my dad long gone on his way to Moab and the beckoning Book Cliffs.

"Would you like to come in for a minute? You could check the house for bad guys, and I could make us something yummy to eat. I think I have ice cream in the freezer and I could make us some hot fudge topping to put on top?" I waggled my eyebrows at him in the dim interior of the truck, and he smiled a little.

"Bad guys?"

"Oh you know, I'm here all alone, the house is dark. Just look under the beds and make sure no one is hiding in my closet."

"Are you afraid to be alone at night?" His brows were lowered with concern over his black eyes.

"Nope. I just wanted to give you a reason to come inside."

His expression cleared, and his voice lowered even further. "Aren't you reason enough?"

I felt the heat rise in my face. "Hmmm," was all I said.

"Josie."

"Yes?"

"I would love to come in. ~ Amy Harmon

I think a writer's job is to provoke questions. I like to think that if someone's read a book of mine, they've had - I don't know what - the literary equivalent of a shower. Something that would start them thinking in a slightly different way, perhaps. That's what I think writers are for. ~ Doris Lessing

A sentence in Auden's Airman's Journal has always seemed very profound to me
I
haven't the book here so I can't quote it exactly, but something about time and space and
how 'geography is a thousand times more important to modern man than history'
I
always like to feel where I am geographically all the time, on the map,
but maybe that
is something else again. ~ Elizabeth Bishop

Memories are strange things. Withough being something I can hold in my hand, they wield a beguiling power over me. Like a mirage in the noontime heat of summer, they dance before my inner eyes and beckon me to find water where there is not water. ~ Joy Sikorski

Since one could virtually open the Bible to any page and likely find something that speaks to his particular situation, is it fair to attribute this to the voice of God? After all, the Bible is not the only relevant book in existence. There are other religions with other scriptural texts which could do the same job. In fact, the text need not even be "scriptural." I could select Sartre's "Existentialism and Humanism" off the shelf, randomly flip to any page, and likely find something applicable to my life. Does this mean God is speaking through the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, a man who was by no means considered a friend to Christian thought? If the answer is yes, then who really needs to read the Bible? If this God is capable of turning anything into his "word" at any time, then you could theoretically receive a message from him in your Alpha-Bits. ~ Michael Vito Tosto

Another sketch-this one of Gabriel-hung on the all above the water cask. It swiveled gently on a single tack; or rather, the paper hung plump with gravity while the whole ship swiveled around it. She'd captured Gabriel's toothy, inoffensive grin and the devilish gleam in his eye, and the effect of the paper's constant, subtle rocking was to make the image come alive. Softly, strangely-the portrait of Gabriel was laughing.
Gray shook himself. Laughing at him, most likely.
"She comes here?" he asked.
"Aye. That she does. Every morning." Gabriel straightened his hunched spine and adopted a cultured tone. "We take tea."
Gray frowned. One more place he'd have to avoid-the galley at morning teatime. "See to it that she eats something. Slip more milk in her tea. Make her treacle duff every day, if she cares for it. Are you giving her a daily ration of lime juice?"
Gabriel smiled down at the salt pork. "Yes, sir."
"Double it."
"Yes, sir." Gabriel's grin widened.
"And stop grinning, damn it."
"Yes, sir." The old man practically sang the words as he pounded away at the meat. "Never thought I'd live to see the day. ~ Tessa Dare

One might talk about the sanity of the atom the sanity of space the sanity of the electron the sanity of water- For it is all alive and has something comparable to that which we call sanity in ourselves. The only oneness is the oneness of sanity. ~ D.H. Lawrence

His eyeless skull took in the line of costumes, the waxy debris of the makeup table. His empty nostrils snuffed up the mixed smells of mothballs, grease, and sweat. There was something here, he thought, that nearly belonged to the gods. Humans had built a world inside the world, which reflected it in pretty much the same way as a drop of water reflects the landscape. And yet... and yet... Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all the things you might think they would want to escape from - hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreamt up took them further in. ~ Terry Pratchett

It had been communicated to me through the odd, secret whispers of women that a female's nose must never shine. In war, in famine, in fire, it had to be matte, and no one got a lipstick without the requisite face powder. … I was taunted by the problem: how could someone write something like the 'Symposium' and make sure her nose did not shine at the same time? It didn't matter to me that I was reading a translation. I'd read Plato's brilliant, dense prose and not be able to tear myself away. Even as a reader my nose shined. It was clearly either/or. You had to concentrate on either one or the other. In a New York minute, the oil from Saudi Arabia could infiltrate your house and end up on your nose. It didn't hurt, it didn't make noise, it didn't incapacitate in any way except for the fact that no girl worth her salt took enough time away from vigilance to read a book let alone write one. ~ Andrea Dworkin

They have removed the struggle to find anything. And therefore there is no genuine sense of discovery. Struggle is the first thing we know getting along the birth canal, out in the world. It's pretty basic. Book store owners and record store owners used to be oracles, in that way; you'd go in this dusty old place and they might point you toward something that would change your life. All that's gone. ~ Tom Waits

I don't think I'm an exceptionally bad reader. I suspect that many people, maybe even most, are like me. We read and read and read,
and we forget and forget and forget. So why do we bother? Michel de Montaigne expressed the dilemma of extensive reading in the
sixteenth century: "I leaf through books, I do not study them," he wrote. "What I retain of them is something I no longer recognize as anyone else's.
It is only the material from which my judgment has profited, and the thoughts and ideas with which it has become imbued;
the author, the place, the words, and other circumstances, I immediately forget." He goes on to explain how "to compensate a
little for the treachery and weakness of my memory," he adopted the habit of writing in the back of every book a short critical
judgment, so as to have at least some general idea of what the tome was about and what he thought of it. ~ Joshua Foer

Insecurity is being scared of your authentic self. It is the belief that your true, authentic self is not as magnificent as it actually is. Let go of that insecurity and do something totally gutsy and feel the relief in that. ~ Amy Leigh Mercree

You should have just left me there."

He pulls out of the cemetery and onto the road. "Don't be so dramatic. Besides I told you I would never leave you. Just like you never left me."

"I think you've repaid that debt, Jackson Gray."

He shakes his head. "So quickly you forget our pact."

I put my foot on his dash and hold my hands in front of the vents. I still can't believe he's still rescuing me, years later. "Who could forget that. You were cowering on the floor of the library."

"I wasn't cowering."

"Okay. You were leaning down to get a book when large bullies materialized in front of you." I glance at him. "Is that better?"

He rolls his eyes. "No one's ever done something like that for me before. Even though I'd never admit a girl fought one of my battles."

I adjust the seat belt so it's tighter. "Get over it, Jackson Gray. I did what anyone would do."

"No one else would have stuck up for the new kid." He shrugs. "Is that the type of person you'd leave freezing in a cemetery?"

"You mean, you'd leave other people freezing in a cemetery?"

He sighs and nudges me in the shoulder. "Just shut up. ~ Erica M. Chapman

In the Bay, whenever I got depressed, I always drove out to the Ocean Beach. Just to sit. And, I don't know, something about looking at water, how it just goes and goes and goes, something about that I found very soothing. As if somehow I were connected to every ripple that was sending itself out and out until it reached another shore. ~ Cisneros Sandra

You in the mood for a movie tonight?" Kate asked him a couple days later. Matt was working, and she was sitting on her customary bucket taking a break, drinking bottled water, and surreptitiously admiring him from every angle.
"I could pick something up on my way over tonight."
"Sure."
"How about Pride and Prejudice?"
"What's that?" he asked warily. It's not one of those movies where they all wear old-fashioned clothes and walk around talking in British accents, is it?"
"That's exactly what it is."
Matt groaned.
"It's romantic! Maybe one of the most romantic stories ever. ~ Becky Wade

NO reader has ANY obligation to an author, whether it be to leave a review or to write a "constructive" one. I put out a product. You are consumers of that product. Since when does that mean you have to kiss my ass? Hey, I like Pop-Tarts and eat them a few times a year; since when does that mean I'm obligated to support Kellogg's in any way except legally purchasing the Pop-Tarts before I eat them? I wasn't aware that purchasing and consuming a product meant I was under some sort of fucking thrall in which I'm only allowed to either praise the Pop-Tart (which to be honest isn't hard, especially the S'mores flavor) or, if I am going to criticize a flavor, offer a specific and detailed analysis as to why, phrased in as inoffensive and gentle a manner as possible so as not to upset the gentle people at Kellogg's."
[Something in the Water? (blog post; January 9, 2012)] ~ Stacia Kane

November 20. Andrius's birthday. I had counted the days carefully. I wished him a happy birthday when I woke and thought about him while hauling logs during the day. At night, I sat by the light of the stove, reading Dombey and Son. Krasivaya. I still hadn't found the word. Maybe I'd find it if I jumped ahead. I flipped through some of the pages. A marking caught my eye. I leafed backward. Something was written in pencil in the margin of 278.
Hello, Lina. You've gotten to page 278. That's pretty good!
I gasped, then pretened I was engrossed in the book. I looked at Andrius's handwritting. I ran my finger over this elongated letters in my name. Were there more? I knew I should read onward. I couldn't wait. I turned though the pages carefully, scanning the margins.
Page 300:
Are you really on page 300 or are you skipping ahead now?
I had to stifle my laughter.
Page 322:
Dombey and Son is boring. Admit it.
Page 364:
I'm thinking of you.
Page 412:
Are you maybe thinking of me?
I closed my eyes.
Yes, I'm thinking of you. Happy birthday, Andrius. ~ Ruta Sepetys

We should do something," I said.
"Can the something be play blind-guy video games while sitting on the couch?"
"Yeah, that's just the kind of something I had in mind."
So we sat there for a couple hours talking to the screen together, navigating this invisible labyrinthine cave without a single lumen of light. The most entertaining part of the game by was far trying to get the computer to engage with us in humorous conversation:
Me: "Touch the cave wall."
Computer: "You touch the cave wall. It is moist."
Isaac: "Lick the cave wall."
Computer: "I do not understand. Repeat?"
Me: "Hump the cave wall."
Computer: "You attempt to jump. You hit your head."
Isaac: "Not jump. HUMP."
Computer: "I don't understand."
Isaac: "Dude, I've been alone in the dark in this cave for weeks and I need some relief. HUMP THE CAVE WALL."
Computer: "You attempt to ju - "
Me: "Thrust pelvis against cave wall."
Computer: "I do not - "
Isaac: "Make sweet love to the cave."
Computer: "I do not - "
Me: "FINE. Follow left branch."
Computer: "You follow the left branch. The passage narrows."
Me: "Crawl."
Computer: "You crawl for one hundred yards. The passage narrows."
Me: "Snake crawl."
Computer: "You snake crawl for thirty yards. A trickle of water runs down your body. You reach a mound of small rocks blocking the passageway."
Me: "Can I hump the cave now?"
Computer: "You cannot jump ~ John Green

There's a reason why most men don't read romance: Romance novels are wish-fulfillment for women. The fictitious men in romance novels fall all over themselves trying to please a woman. Does that sound like your real life experience with men? No of course not. (Except for guys who want to fuck you. There is no man more attentive
as the guy who wants to fuck you for the first time.)

That's why you read romance. To get something you don't get in real life. Because your husband's idea of romance is bringing out the trash and not farting during sex. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy

Almondine

To her, the scent and the memory of him were one. Where it lay strongest, the distant past came to her as if that morning: Taking a dead sparrow from her jaws, before she knew to hide such things. Guiding her to the floor, bending her knee until the arthritis made it stick, his palm hotsided on her ribs to measure her breaths and know where the pain began. And to comfort her. That had been the week before he went away.

He was gone, she knew this, but something of him clung to the baseboards. At times the floor quivered under his footstep. She stood then and nosed into the kitchen and the bathroom and the bedroom-especially the closet-her intention to press her ruff against his hand, run it along his thigh, feel the heat of his body through the fabric.

Places, times, weather-all these drew him up inside her. Rain, especially, falling past the double doors of the kennel, where he'd waited through so many storms, each drop throwing a dozen replicas into the air as it struck the waterlogged earth. And where the rising and falling water met, something like an expectation formed, a place where he might appear and pass in long strides, silent and gestureless. For she was not without her own selfish desires: to hold things motionless, to measure herself against them and find herself present, to know that she was alive precisely because he needn't acknowledge her in casual passing; that utter constancy might prevail if she attended the world ~ David Wroblewski

The shower turned out to be glorious once I adjusted the water to a cool enough temperature so as not to produce any steam. I washed my hair, noticing that my favorite shampoo suddenly smelled like Hades--as did my trusty facial scrub, which had so loyally saved my face from looking like the back of a lizard on the day of my wedding. Just as I was rinsing the last of the suds from my hair, Marlboro Man suddenly burst through the door of the bathroom and yelled, "Hey!"
I screamed bloody murder from the startle, then screamed again because I was naked and feeling queasy and unattractive. Then I felt sick from the excitement. "Hi," I managed, grabbing a towel from the rack and wrapping it around myself as quickly as I could.
"Gotcha," he said, smiling the sexiest smile I'd ever seen while in such a sick state. Then he stopped and looked at me. "Are you okay?" He must have noticed the verdant glow of my skin.
"I'll be honest," I said, making my way back to our bedroom. "It's pretty bad. I'm going to try to get in to the doctor today and see if there's anything he can do about it." I fell backward onto the bed. "My ears must have been permanently damaged or something."
Marlboro Man moved toward me, looking like the cat that had just eaten the canary. "Scared you, didn't I?" he chuckled as he wrapped his arms around my towel-cloaked body. I breathed him in, wrapping my arms around him, too.
Then I shot up and raced back to the bathroom so I could throw up a ~ Ree Drummond

It became clear that Keisha Blake could not start something without finishing it. If she climbed onto the boundary wall of Caldwell, she was compelled to walk the entire wall, no matter the obstructions in her path (beer cans, branches). This compulsion, applied to other fields, manifested itself as "intelligence." Every unknown word sent her to a dictionary--in search of something like "completion"--and every book led to another book, a process that, of course, could never be completed. This route through early life gave her no small portion of joy, and, indeed, it seemed at first that her desires and her capacities were basically aligned. She wanted to read things--could not resist wanting to read things--and reading was easily done, and relatively inexpensive. On the other hand, that she should receive any praise for such reflexive habits baffled the girl, for she knew herself to be fantastically stupid about many things. Wasn't it possible that what others mistook for intelligence was in fact only a sort of mutation of the will? ~ Zadie Smith

PERHAPS IN SOME FORMAL SENSE every book begins by considering its own impossibility, but this book's completion has depended on a way of working with that impossibility without a clear resolution. Even so, something of that impossibility has to be sustained within the writing, even if it continually threatens to bring the project to a halt. ~ Judith Butler

Obama might as well be president of Turkey or Brazil; it does not matter. It's the system that is absolutely flawed, where 25 or 35 or 50 people make multi, multi-billions on building Olympic structures while people live in Barbados and have no roads or clean drinking water. There's something pretty inequitable there. ~ Al Jourgensen