Humor is what happens when we’re told the truth quicker and more directly than we’re used to.
— George Saunders, “Mr. Vonnegut in Sumatra” (via dogshitrocketfuel)
‘Hallo, Rabbit,’ he said, ‘is that you?’
‘Let’s pretend it isn’t,’ said Rabbit, ‘and see what happens.’
— A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh (via somelittlejoy)
And yet, she insisted, this boy was also himself.
— Sinclair Lewis in Main Street.
If it could only be like this always – always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe and Aloysius in a good temper…
— Evelyn Waugh in Brideshead Revisited.
He lay there on a bed of cold pebbles, the cold water washing, rippling over him; he wished he were a leaf, like the current-carried leaves riding past: leaf-boy, he would float lightly away, float and fade into a river, an ocean, the world’s great flood. Holding his nose, he put his head underwater: he was six years old, and his penny-colored eyes were round with terror: Holy Ghost, the preacher said, pressing down into the baptism water; he screamed, and his mother watching from the front pew, rushed forward, took him in her arms, held him, and whispered softly: my darling, my darling.
— from Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote
Freedom so often means that one isn’t needed anywhere.
— Willa Cather in O Pioneers!
I’m not sentimental—I’m as romantic as you are. The idea, you know,
is that the sentimental person thinks things will last—the romantic
person has a desperate confidence that they won’t.
— in This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
You are unsentimental, almost incapable of emotion, astute without being cunning and vain without being proud.
— in This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
