( Dear Sophie )

"I really don't see the point of reading in straight lines. We don't think like that and we don't live like that. Our mental processes are closer to a maze than a motorway, every turning yields another turning, not symmetrical, not obvious. Not chaos either. A sophisticated mathematical equation made harder to unravel because X and Y have ( Read more... )

"Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself."

- Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

( Run )

( The Loss of All that Never Could Have Been )

( Actually )

"If heaven is a place on earth, then it is surely located in the little crinkled paper cups that fairy cakes come in."

- Guy Browning, "How to Celebrate", in: Never Hit a Jellyfish with a Spade

"In life you're either a team player or someone who doesn't get picked for teams. Loners and rugged individualists have usually chosen their lifestyle because they were sick of it being chosen for them at school."

- Guy Browning, "How to be in a Team", in: Never Hit a Jellyfish with a Spade

Carol Ann Duffy, 'Prayer'Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer ( Read more... )

So, who on earth came up with the idea of redesigning the covers of the Penguin Popular Classics (which, I've noticed, aren't even mentioned outright on the Penguin website or, for that matter, Wikipedia)? Okay, so the old style wasn't particularly pleasing, and I do like simplicity and editions without cover pictures, but whose idea was it to have ( Read more... )