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“She has no interest in the composition from ten or twenty feet—that will come later. What she wants is topography, the impasto, the furrows where sable hairs were dragged into tiny painted crests to catch the light. Or the stray line of charcoal or chalk, glimpsed beneath a glaze that’s three hundred years old. She’s been known to take a safety pin and test the porosity of the paint and then bring the point to her tongue. Since old-world grounds contain gesso, glue, and something edible—honey, milk, cheese—the Golden Age has a distinctively sweet or curdled taste. She is always careful to avoid the leads and the cobalts. What”
― The Last Painting of Sara de Vos
― The Last Painting of Sara de Vos
“Yet he too obsessed me for years. Until I wrote it out, I would find my lips moving; I would be arguing with him; raging against him; saying to myself all that I never said to him. How deep they drove themselves into me, the things it was impossible to say aloud.”
― Moments of Being: A Collection of Autobiographical Writing
― Moments of Being: A Collection of Autobiographical Writing
“These then are some of my first memories. But of course as an account of my life they are misleading, because the things one does not remember are as important; perhaps they are more important.”
― Moments of Being: A Collection of Autobiographical Writing
― Moments of Being: A Collection of Autobiographical Writing
“They covered their walls with beautiful paintings for the same reason they drank—to distract themselves from the abyss.”
― The Last Painting of Sara de Vos
― The Last Painting of Sara de Vos
“If life has a base that it stands upon, if it is a bowl that one fills and fills and fills - than my bowl without a doubt stands upon this memory.”
― Moments of Being: A Collection of Autobiographical Writing
― Moments of Being: A Collection of Autobiographical Writing
21st Century Literature
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We read literary fiction from 2000 to present, with the intent of finding those literary gems of timeless and enduring quality. We're less focused o ...more
All About Books
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We're here because we like reading and we like chatting about reading. But we are here especially because we strongly believe that reading is not just ...more
Ben’s 2025 Year in Books
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