Desertrose added a quote:
"I looked up to see him smiling a crooked smile so beautiful that I could only stare at him like an idiot.

- Bella Swan" — Stephenie Meyer

Desertrose added a quote:
"A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading." — William Styron

Desertrose added a quote:
"Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a blank piece of paper until your forehead bleeds." — Douglas Adams

Desertrose read and liked Maggie Campbell's review of The God of Small Things:

""Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and...more "Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening."

"Perhaps it's true that things can happen in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcomes of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house- the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture- must be ressurected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for."

"Ammu didn't pretend to be in love with him. She just weighed the odds and accepted."

"Memory was that woman on the train. Insane in the way she sifted through the dark things in a closet and emerged with the most unlikely ones- a fleeting look, a feeling. The smell of smoke. A windscreen wiper. A mother's marble eyes. Quite sane in the way she left huge tracts of darkness veiled. Unremembered."

" 'D'you know what happens when you hurt people?' Ammu said. "When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.'"

"And the Air was full of Thoughts and Things to Say. But at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. The Big Things lurk unsaid inside."

"If you're happy in a dream, Ammu, does that count?"

"The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don't surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover's skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won't. In the Great Storis you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again."

"She thought of Chacko's laugh, and a smile stayed in her eyes for a long time."

"Had he known that he was about to enter a tunnel whose only egress was his own annihilation, would he have turned away?
Perhaps.
Perhaps not.
Who can tell?"

"A cloudy kiss. A kiss that demanded a kiss-back."
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