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| Chapter III was one of my favorite chapters in this book.
Chapter II:
Teaching the Cat to Yawn
"But you couldn't really say his heart was in it." pg.43
"'Look at what I've accomplished,' Cody would tell him. 'Notice where I've got to, how far I've come without you.' Was it something I said? Was it something I did? Was it something I didn't do, that made you go away?" pg.47
"They were like people from long ago, laughing and calling only in memory or in one of those eerily lifelike dreams that begin on the edge of sleep." pg.53
"She says you're real good-looking and all but she wants a boy she can respect." pg.58
"His father had ruined their lives, Cody thought--first in one way and then in another." pg.59
"But if you could just realize how... helpless I feel! How scary it is to know that everyone I love depends on me! I'm afraid I'll do something wrong." pg.63
Chapter III:
Destroyed By Love
"It still has his smell. Maybe if I aired it a while... It still has his shape in it, know what I mean? I look in and the air feels full of something warm. I think we ought to wait a bit." pg. 68
"Jenny felt even slighter than usual, overwhelmed by so much empty space." pg.69
"Jenny had a faint, tremulous hope that times had changed." pg.70
"She seemed to be burdened, cruelly misused, bearing up under an exhausting weight that had something to do with men and experience." pg.72
"He was so certain of being loved, here if no place else." pg. 78
"She longed for it; she wished it were true. She ached, with something like nostalgia." pg.79
"You would think he was speaking of something alive--an animal, some creatue that would suffer." pg.92
"If you don't go on and get married, you'll be destroyed by love." pg.96
"Life is a continual shoring up, she says, against one thing and another just eroding and crumbling away. I'm beginning to think she's right." pg.99
"She loosened, she was safe at last, in the only place where people knew exactly who she was and loved her anyhow." pg.102
"They'd found her out: at heart, there was nothing to her." pg.103
"Nothing was ever simpole; there were always these complications." pg.103
"Probably what he was saying was 'Please don't go.'" pg.103
"Going home, she wondered why the walk seemed so long. Her feet felt unusually heavy, and there was some old, rusty pain deep inside her chest." pg.105
"She read neglect and hopelessness." pg.106
"And she should have guessed from the very first instant, from the briefest, most cursory glance, that Jenny was not capable of being destroyed by love." pg. 111
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| These are all quotes from Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler. It was one of my summer reading books for AP LA I. It's so good, and I highly recommend it.
-->EDIT: actually, there are so many good quotes to this book, I can only do a chapter a time.
Chapter I:
Something You Should Know
"There ought to be a whole separate language, she thought, for words that are tuer than other words--for perfect, absolute truth. It was the purest fact of her life: she did not understand him and she never would." pg.10
"She took infinite care." pg.10
"It didn't occur to her to answer him. Yet she went on saving his letters." pg.13
"At night she dreamed that Beck was new and wonderful again, someone she'd just become acquainted with. he gazed at her adoringly, overturning some unfamiliar center deep inside her. He helped her cross streets, climb steps. His hand cupped her elbow warmly or circled her waist or steadied the small of her back. She felt cherished." pg.13
"It was unthinkable to cry in front of the children. Or in front of anyone. Oh, she had her pride! She was not a tranquil woman; she often lost her temper, snapped, slapped the nearest cheek, said things she later regretted--but thank the Lord, she didn't expose her tears. She didn't allow any tears." pg.14
"If she allowed herself to think, she started worrying." pg.15
"She knew that she was competent." pg.16
"She had heard you could not dream a smell, or recall a smell in its absence, so when she woke she was convinced, for a moment, that Beck had led himself into the house and was seated on the edge of the bed, watching while she slept. But there was no one there." pg.17
"She felt him grow still. He had this habit--he had always had it--of becoming totally motionless when people spoke to him. It was endearing, but also in some ways a strain, for then whatever she said to him was bound to disappoint him, wasn't it? How could she live up to Ezra's expectations?" pg.18
"He could surprise you, Ezra could. He'd let a person walk all over him but then display at odd moments, a deep and rock-hard stubborness." pg.19
"'If it turned out that money grew on trees, just for one day and never again, would you let me stay home from school and pick it?' 'No,' she told him. 'Why not?' 'Your education is more important.' 'Other kids' mothers would let them, I bet.' 'Other mothers don't have plans for their children to amount to something.'" pg.19
"It only now occured to her, under her damp quilt, to wonder why she hand't said yes, he could stay home. If money decided to grown on trees one day, let him pick all he liked! she should have said. What difference would it have made?" pg.19
"She'd been continually on edge; she'd felt too burdened, too much alone." pg.19
"They never asked about him. Didn't that show how little importance a father has? The invisible man. The absent presence. Pearl felt a twinge of angry joy." pg.20
"One night she threw away his letters. It wasn't a planned decision. She was just cleaning her bureau, was all, and couldn't think of any good reason to save them." pg.20
"It occured to her that the man she still mourned, late on sleepless nights, bore no relation whatsoever to the man who sent these tiresome messages." pg.20
"She had never been ashamed about taking money... Where she came from, a woman expected the men to provide." pg.21
"Relatively speaking, it was nothing--empty far longer than full." pg.21
"Their growing up amounted, therefore, to a gradual dimming of the light at her bedroom door, as if they took some radiance with them as they moved away from her." pg.21
"She was astounded by their innocence." pg.22
"Wouldn't it be nice, she said, if heaven were Wrightsville Beach? If, after dying, they'd open their eyes and find themselves back on that warm, sunny sand, everyone young and happy again, those long-ago waves rolling in to shore? But Cody hadn't entered into the spirit of the thing. Nice? he had asked. He asked, was that all she thought of heaven? Wrightsville Beach, where as he recalled she had fretted for two solid weeks that she might have left the oven on at home? And had she taken into account, he asked, his own wishes in the matter? Did she suppose that he wanted to spend eternity as a child?" pg.22
"Something was wrong with him. Something was wrong with all of her children... She sensed a trademark flaw in each of their lives." pg.22
"She wondered if her children blamed her for something. Sitting close at family gatherings (with the spouses and offspring slightly apart, nonmembers forever), they tended to recall only poverty and loneliness." pg.22
"When was he going to absolve her? He was middle-aged. He had no business holding her responsible anymore." pg.23
"Her one mistake: a simple error in judgment. It should have been had such far-reaching effects. You would think that life could be a little more forgiving." pg.23
"It was typical of him that he lacked the taste to make a final exit. He spent too long at his farewells, chatting in the doorway, letting in the cold." pg.23
"Her memory had not faded in the slightest." pg.24
"What did he expect--that she'd go on forever? It was so tiring. But that was Ezra for you." pg.26
"'She left me first, after all. Here's this invite to her funeral.' She could hear him now. She laughed." pg.26
"She blamed Beck, who through sheer thoughtlessness if not intention had shot her through the heart; or not the heart exactly but the fleshy part above it, between breast and shoulder." pg.28
"'You almost died, a nurse told her. But that was nonsense. Of course she wouldn't have died; she had children. When you have children, you're obligated to live." pg.28
"How odd; she hadn't realized. She had also supposed that there would be some turning point, a flash of light in which she'd suddenly find out the secret; one day she'd wake up wiser and more contented and accepting. But it hadn't happened. Now it never would." pg.30
"But nothing was final. She didn't have anything to tell them. She felt a kind of shyness; she felt inadequate." pg.30
"As usual, he seemed to have missed some central point." pg.31
"She gave a little snort of laughter, and Pearl smiled, picturing Jenny's habit of covering her mouth with her hand as if overcome, as if struck absolutely helpless by life's silliness." pg.33
"His very absence was a characteristic, perhaps his main one." pg.33
"And Jenny was so brisk and breezy but... oh, you might say somewhat opaque, a reflecting surface flashing your own self back at you, giving no hint of her self." pg.33
"It was such a relief to drift, finally. Why had she spent so long learning how?" pg.34
"She kept mislaying her place in time, but it made no difference; all she remembered was equally pleasant." pg.34
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| super long entry, enjoy.
happy new year.
<740 subscribers3
"I guess when it comes down to it being grown up isn't half as fun as growing up."
-The Ataris
"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment."
-Buddha
"If you could go anywhere right now, where would you go, & would you miss me when you get there?"
-the ataris
"Dance like there's nobody watching. Love like you'll never get hurt. Sing like there's nobody listening. LIve like it's heaven on earth. & Speak from the heart to be heard."
-William W. Purkey
"I pray I get the chance to make it up to you. We've got a lot of catching up to do."
-The Ataris
"Everything has been figured out;; expect how to live."
-Jean-Paul Sartre
"We will make history tonight."
-the ataris
"Life is a comedy for those who think... & a tragedy for those who feel."
-Horace Walpole
"I
wish there was something I could say to erase each & every page
you've been through even though it's not my place to save you."
-the ataris
"If you love somebody, let them go. If they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never were."
-Anon
"Last night while everyone was sleeping I drove through my old neighborhood & resurrected memories from ashes."
-the ataris
"Love does not begin & end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war, love is growing up."
-James Baldwin
"You're always playing all of the same songs. It's about time that we all turned off the radio."
-the ataris
"The best proof of love is trust."
-Joyce Brothers
"& When this hourglass has filtered out its final grain of sand I raise my glass to the memories we had."
-the ataris
"You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments you have done things in the spirit of love."
-Henry Drummond
If you ever truly love someone there will always be some of that love left in your heart. You might not always feel it. Sometimes you forget it's there. But one day when you see them you remember all the times you had together, & it will take your breath away all over again.
"As I look out on these fairgrounds, I remember how our family split apart."
-the ataris
Life is about trusting your feelings & taking chances, losing & finding happiness. Appreciating the memories & learning from the pain & realizing that people always change.
"I'll never be the same without you, I love you more than you will ever know."
-the ataris
Well, I really don't have much to say. Heartbroken, yes. Upset, yes. Tired, hell yes. But getting through life with all these struggles? Been there, done that. I'm used to these feelings, & I know exactly how to deal with everything that life throws at me. But hopefully, sometime soon, I won't have to go through half the emotions I have right now.
"Cruisin down Pacific Coast Highway. Put the top down, crawl into the back seat. Let's create anthems of our own tonight."
-the ataris
Okay, I admit it. I'm scared. I'm scared I'm gonna lose you forever. I thought so long & so hard just to keep you in my life. & To sit there & realize that you are gone & I'm in this alone terrifries me. I'm so scared to do this & I don't think I can do it alone.
"Even angels would be homesick in this forsaken town."
-the ataris
"LOVE;; it is teh hardest habit to break & the craving most difficult to satisfy."
-Drew Barrymore
"I miss the seasons in the comfort of your smile."
-the ataris
You don't remember days;; you remember moments.
"I remember waiting for you to come. Remember waiting for you to call. Remember waiting there to find nothing at all."
-the ataris
& She hates how she stays up half the night analyzing his every world trying to find out if he's fallen for her as hard as she's fallen for him.
"These relics of rememberance are just like shipwrecks."
-the ataris
"the question is not whether we will die, but how we will live."
-Joan Borysenko
"I know what it's like growing up without your father in your life."
-the ataris
"As long as you know that men are like children you know everything."
-Coco Chanel
"You bring your guitar & I'll bring my radio."
-the ataris
Take nothing but photos. Leave nothing but footsteps. & Kill nothing but time.
"I'm trying to believe in you, but all these satellites & shattered dreams are blocking out my view."
-the ataris
& This bed could use a secret & these pounding hearts could keep it.
"This world sold its faith for parking lots & drunken sincerity."
-the ataris
"Someone out there is meant to be the love of your life. Your best friend. Your soulmate. The one you can tell your dreams to. He'll smile at you when you tell him, but he'll never laugh at your heart. He'll brush the hair out of your eyes & send you flowers when you least expect it. He'll call you to tell you goodnight before you get into bed or just because he's thinking about you. He'll be bursting to talk to you each morning, just to hear the sound of your voice. He'll look into your eyes & tell you you're the most beautiful girl he's ever seen & for the first time in your life you'll believe it."
-Dawson's Creek.
"We'll listen to b-sides & sing along to anthems of the years gone by. Integrity & honesty will prevail tonight."
-the ataris
"I wanted a perfect ending. Now, I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, & some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, & end. Life is about not knowing, have to change, taking the moment, & making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity."
-Gilda Radner
"We are the champions playing loud on the radio station. Everyone sing along with these anthems of our generation."
-the ataris
I want you so bad. Okay, there. I admitted it. Are you finally happy? I admit that I fell hard for you. Harder than I've ever fallen in my life. & You weren't there to catch me.
"I raise my hands up towards the sky & say this prayer for you tonight, because nothing is impossible."
-the ataris
"Sometimes I still see myself in that lonesome bedroom playing my guitar & singing songs of hope for a better future."
-the ataris
Cause we've got something here, that other people envy. Our love can make a disaster fade away.
"As I sit here all alone, I wonder how I'm supposed to carry on when you're gone."
-the ataris
One day I'm going to look back on today & realize how stupid of a teenager I was. How shallow people can be & I'm going to realize that if I could do it all over again, I'd make the same choices. Because come to think of it, I learned a lot.
"Stay who you are."
-the ataris
"If I had one wish it would be to have a big enough ass for the world to kiss. "
Eminem
"On random notes of parchment I'm scrawling my existence."
-the ataris
You know you have the greatest friends when the only time they make you cry is when you're laughing too hard.
"Life is only as good as the memories we make & i'm taking back what belongs to me."
-the ataris
I had forgotten what it felt like to have someone you can't get enough of.
"There's no place that I would rather be"
-the ataris
She whispers into the mirror as she wipes the running eyeliner from her eyes... I miss him.
"A little voice inside my head said, "Don't look back, You can never look back.""
-the ataris
"If he was stupid enough to cheat on you, he was dumb enough to get caught."
-Hitch
"Do you ever feel like crying? Do you ever feel like giving up?"
-the ataris
"Me? I'm scared of everything. I'm scared of what I saw, I'm scared of what I did, of who I am, & most of all I'm scared of walking out of this room & never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I'm with you."
-Dirty Dancing.
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| 739 subscribers
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"We said that we would never fit in. When we were really just like them. Does rebellion ever make a difference?"
-the ataris
"Love therefore- the most beautiful phenomenon in the soul-filled creation, the omnipotent magnet in the spiritual world, the source of devotion & of the most sublime virtue. Love is only the reflection of this single original power, an attraction of the excellent, grounded upon as instantaneous
exchange of the personality, a confusion of the beings. When I hate,
so I take something from myself. When I love, so become I so much richer, by what I love. Forgiveness is the recovery of an alienated property. Hatred of a man, a prolonged suicide. Egoism the highest poverty of a created being."
-Friedrich von Schiller
"I called you from Paris to tell you that I wrote our names on the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower."
-The Ataris
"When I find myself fading, I close my eyes & realize my friends are my energy"
-Anon
"All
the nights we stayed up talking. Listening to 80's songs & quoting
lines from all those movies that we love. It still brings a smile to
my face."
-The Ataris
You never really stop loving someone. You just learn to live without them.
"If I died tomorrow would this song live on forever?"
-The Ataris
"Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not somehting you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship. You really haven't learned anything."
-Muhammad Ali
"I'd go to the pound & let all the cats go free. Just as long as you'd be with me."
-The Ataris
"A friend is one who knows you & loves you just the same."
-Elbert Hubbard
"The runway lights are the deepest blue. Like the colors of your eyes, so close them tight & kiss me one last time."
-the ataris
"happiness comes only when we push our brains & hearts to the farthest reaches of which we are capable of."
-Leo Rosten
"I wont' spend another night alone."
-the ataris
"& In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."
-Abraham Licoln
"So appreciate the good times, but don't take the worst for granted."
-the ataris
"I guess when it comes down to it being grown up isn't half as fun as growing up."
-The Ataris
"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment."
-Buddha
"If you could go anywhere right now, where would you go, & would you miss me when you get there?"
-the ataris
"Dance like there's nobody watching. Love like you'll never get hurt. Sing like there's nobody listening. Live like it's heaven on earth. & Speak from the heart to be heard."
-William W. Purkey
"I pray I get the chance to make it up to you. We've got a lot of catching up to do."
-The Ataris
"Everything has been figured out;; expect how to live."
-Jean-Paul Sartre
"We will make history tonight."
-the ataris
"Life is a comedy for those who think... & a tragedy for those who feel."
-Horace Walpole
"I
wish there was something I could say to erase each & every page
you've been through even though it's not my place to save you."
-the ataris
"If you love somebody, let them go. If they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never were."
-Anon
"Last night while everyone was sleeping I drove through my old neighborhood & resurrected memories from ashes."
-the ataris
"Love does not begin & end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war, love is growing up."
-James Baldwin
"You're always playing all of the same songs. It's about time that we all turned off the radio."
-the ataris
"The best proof of love is trust."
-Joyce Brothers
"& When this hourglass has filtered out its final grain of sand I raise my glass to the memories we had."
-the ataris
"You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments you have done things in the spirit of love."
-Henry Drummond
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| 736 subscribers
Perfect love isn't real... It is rough & heartwrenching. But at the end of the day you know it's worth working for. ♥
"I
went by the place where you & I wrote our names in wet cement &
for a moment remembered how it felt to have no one understand that
there's this dream & they're not part of it."
-The Ataris
"You are for real & nothing will ever come between us."
The Ataris
"No matter what you do you'll never get ahead & to everyone else you're just better off dead."
-the ataris
i'm glad i waited all these years to give my whole heart to someone.
"I'm stuck inside of someone else's dream."
the ataris
"Things are looking bleak, everybody thinks that I'm a geek."
-the ataris
& I'm blasting my music so I won't hear my thoughts, but it's stupid because the lyrics just remind me of what I'm trying to forget. I'm torn between wanting the feeling to go away, trying to keep it just a little longer, cause you brought out something in me I never knew I had.
"Sometimes I sit & think about yesterday of all the simple words that I didn't even say. I just sit back & wonder why..."
-the ataris
The opposite sex is the most powerful & addictive drug out there, but the high is unlike anything else. ♥
"I don't have to listen to you. So don't you fucking tell me what to do."
-the ataris
I'm so sick & tired of acting like I'm fine because truthfully, i'm not. I can't even talk to you without being so incredibly sad. You were the one person who was always supposed to be there fo rme. my best friend, my everything, & you ruined it all in that moment & I acted like it didn't hurt for a while, I didn't think it did. But hte tears are here & now I realize that it hurts more than anything in teh world.
"Expect nothing, live frugally on surprise."
-Alice Walker
"Because you only get so many second chances."
-the ataris
"Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore each moemnt is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments & to live each is to suceed."
-Corita Kent
"The only thing that matters is just following your heart & eventually you'll finally get it right."
-the ataris
"Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live."
-Dorothy Thompson
"The things you make me wanna do. I'd rob a quick-e mart for you."
-the ataris
"You don't get to choose how you're going to die. You can only decide how you're going to live now. "
-Joan Baez
"When half of all your prayers are insecure. The other half are lies."
The Ataris
"Better to have loved & lost, than to have never loved at all."
-Saint Augustine
"I'd want a million trillion life times that I could spend iwth you. I'd fall in love with you again & again."
-the ataris
"I
appreciate but can't accept this thank you note that's sealed with your
last breath & I won't stand aside & listen to you give up."
-the ataris
"The hardest part isn't finding what we need to be, it's being content with who we are."
-the ataris
"This is something I'm going through. It's got nothing to do with you."
-The Ataris
"I miss what we had. I need you so badly."
The Ataris.
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