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A Disgraceful Affair: Stories (White Nights, A Disgraceful Affair, The Dream of the Ridiculous Man)

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

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Aug 07, 2024 06:21PM

james’s Quotes

“The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.”
― Donald Barthelme, Come Back, Dr. Caligari

tags: literature

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“—What do the children say?
—There's a thing the children say.
—What do the children say?
—They say: Will you always love me?
—Always.
—Will you always remember me?
—Always.
—Will you remember me a year from now?
—Yes, I will.
—Will you remember me two years from now?
—Yes, I will.
—Will you remember me five years from now?
—Yes, I will.
—Knock knock.
—Who's there?
—You see?

("Great Days," Forty Stories)”
― Donald Barthelme

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“There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.”
― Donald Barthelme

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¡ POETRY ! — 22560 members — last activity Feb 16, 2026 08:36PM
No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read it!) Goodreads honors wordsmiths: poets and poetry promoted and prompted here. ~~~ "Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits." -- Carl Sandburg “God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.” —Anne Sexton On Clouds – “…what primitive tastes the ancients must have had if their poets were inspired by those absurd, untidy clumps of mist, idiotically jostling one another about…” —Yevgeny Zamyatin “If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn’t wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.” —Donald Hall “Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.” —Boris Pasternak “Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.” —Charles Simic “Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.” —Gustave Flaubert “Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.” —Allen Ginsberg. ~~~~~ Amy King, Moderator Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the WNBA Award (Women’s National Book Association). Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She serves on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is co-editing with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology, Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She is also co-editing the anthology, Bettering American Poetry 2015, and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College. ...more

Opium's Literary Death Match — 61 members — last activity Feb 17, 2009 09:24AM
Opium’s Literary Death Match is a competitive, humor-centric reading series that features four readers (who represent print and online literary concer ...more

Opium Magazine Contests! — 33 members — last activity Feb 17, 2009 09:27AM
Opium's oddball contests let writers submit stories for the chance to win $1,000. Currently, Tom Perrotta is judging our 500-Word Memoir Contest, de ...more

The Center for Fiction — 57 members — last activity Mar 31, 2013 10:26AM
This is the Goodreads home of The Center for Fiction, the only non-profit organization in the U.S. devoted solely to the art of fiction. In NYC, our b ...more