“In the end, each life is no more than the sum of contingent facts, a chronicle of chance intersections, of flukes, of random events that divulge nothing but their own lack of purpose.”― Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy What irritates Paul Auster most is when people think that The New York Trilogy is a detective story.... Continue Reading →
"Please gather up your belongings - you won't be returning to this flight.""But.. but... what did I do?" Professor Oon asked, suddenly feeling uneasy."Don't worry, you didn't do anything. But we need to get you off this plane now. (...) We are escorting you directly to Mount Elizabeth Hospital. You have been requested to attend... Continue Reading →
“All of a sudden, in the good-natured child, the woman stood revealed, a disturbing woman with all the impulsive madness of her sex, opening the gates of the unknown world of desire. Nana was still smiling, but with the deadly smile of a man-eater.”Emile Zola, Nana Nana Coupeau was eighteen at the beginning of the... Continue Reading →
Everything depended, my sleeping peacefully, my being able to work, my confidence in myself, upon the only bond by which I held her, the words, extracted not always quickly from her, that she loved me.Alfred Hayes, 'In Love' Through our narrator, a 40-year old man living in New York in 1950s, we are taken into... Continue Reading →
“Justice. I've heard that word. I tried it out. I wrote it down. I wrote it down several times and always it looked like a damn cold lie to me. There is no justice.”― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys, a Dominican-born British author, wrote this story as a response to Charlotte Bronte's 'Jane Eyre'. In... Continue Reading →
“Thinking has, many a time, made me sad, darling; but doing never did in all my life... My precept is, "Do something, my sister, do good if you can; but, at any rate, do something".”― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South When we talk about novels set in the Victorian era written by female authors, Jane Austen and... Continue Reading →
“I have finally concluded, maybe that's what life is about: there's a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty, where time is no longer the same. It's as if those strains of music created a sort of interlude in time, something suspended, an elsewhere that had come to us, an always within... Continue Reading →
Judith Hearne is a spinster past her 40s, living alone in Belfast after her only relative, her aunt died. The two items that she always puts in her room are her late aunt pictures and the Sacred Heart picture. The devotion to the Sacred Heart (of Jesus Christ) is a well-known Catholic devotion, and Miss... Continue Reading →
“But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and living beings.Do you want... Continue Reading →
“Sometimes it has seemed to me that life is a series of punishments for such moments of unawareness, that one forges one’s own destiny by what one doesn’t notice or feel compassion for; that what you don’t know and don’t make the effort to understand will become the very thing you are forced into knowledge... Continue Reading →
