Literary Blurt Thread

[shereads]

"How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him--he has known a fear beyond every other."

- Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

 

[shereads]

John was talking, then he wasn't.

I have no idea which subject we were on, the Scotch or World War One, at the instant he stopped talking.

I only remember looking up. His left hand was raised and he was slumped motionless. At first I thought he was making a failed joke, an attempt to make the difficulty of the day seem manageable.

I remember saying Don't do that.

Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

 

[lesbiaphrodite]

"There is a classic moment in The Sun Also Rises when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt, and all he can say in response is, 'Gradually and then suddenly.' When someone asks how I lost my mind, that is all I can say too." -- Elizabeth Wurtzel