1,321 books
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1,413 voters
“What I really meant to write to you about today was to tell you that I read your learned and technical and I am sure admirable denouncements of Walt Whitman with a respectful attention due to so much earnestness; and when I had done, and wondered awhile pleasantly at the amount of time for letter-writing the Foreign Office allows its young men, I stretched myself, and got my hat, and went down to the river; and I sat at the water's edge in the middle of a great many buttercups; and there was a little wind; and the little wind knocked the heads of the buttercups together; and it seemed to amuse them, or else something else did, for I do assure you I thought I heard them laugh.”
― Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther
― Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther
“And could you not make a cameo of this and pin it onto your aesthetic hearts?”
― Yonnondio: From the Thirties
― Yonnondio: From the Thirties
“It's God's nature to come on in the bottom of the ninth, Tom had told her.”
― The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
― The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
“The flayed landscape of the western prairie does little to remind the people who live there of the covenant of works or the covenant or grace. The sky, visible right down to the horizon, has a diminishing effect upon everything in the foreground, and the distance is as featureless and remote as the possibility of punishment for slander. The roads run straight, with death and old age intersecting at right angles, and the harvest is stored in cemeteries.”
― Time Will Darken It
― Time Will Darken It
“Because around a crisis point, even the tiniest action can assume importance all out of proportion to its size. Consequences multiply and cascade, and anything—a missed telephone call, a match struck during a blackout, a dropped piece of paper, a single moment—can have empire-tottering effects. The Archduke Ferdinand’s chauffeur makes a wrong turn onto Franz-Josef Street and starts a world war. Abraham Lincoln’s bodyguard steps outside for a smoke and destroys a peace. Hitler leaves orders not to be disturbed because he has a migraine and finds out about the D-Day invasion eighteen hours too late. A lieutenant fails to mark a telegram “urgent” and Admiral Kimmel isn’t warned of the impending Japanese attack. “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost.”
― To Say Nothing of the Dog
― To Say Nothing of the Dog
Emma’s 2023 Year in Books
Take a look at Emma’s Year in Books. The good, the bad, the long, the short—it’s all here.
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