“And you do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the Downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.”
― Flaubert's Parrot
― Flaubert's Parrot
“All copulating creatures are vulnerable to attack, but selection over time must have proved that reproductive success was best served by undivided attention. Better to allow the occasional couple to be eaten midrapture than dilute by one jot a vigorous procreational urge. But for seconds on end I had wholesomely and simultaneously indulged two of life's central, antithetical pleasures, reading and fucking.”
― Enduring Love
― Enduring Love
“seeing it in the smoky shadow before dawn as a gradual multiplication”
― Rabbit, Run
― Rabbit, Run
“He said that there were three preconditions for happiness — stupidity, selfishness and good health”
― Flaubert's Parrot
― Flaubert's Parrot
“Why does anyone live here? Why was he set down here; why is this particular ordinary town for him the center and index of a universe that contains great prairies, mountains, deserts, forests, cities, seas? This childish mystery—the mystery of “any place,” prelude to the ultimate, “Why am I me?”—re-ignites panic in his heart.”
― Rabbit, Run
― Rabbit, Run
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