Madi > Recent Status Updates

“‘Zweisamkeit’ is the feeling of being alone even when you’re with other people.” Simon turned to look in his husband’s eyes. “Before I met you, I felt this constantly. I felt it with my family, my friends, and every boyfriend I ever had. I felt it so often that I thought this was the nature of living. To be alive was to accept that you were fundamentally alone.”

[1/2]

He was twenty-seven and he had a mustache, but whenever she allowed herself to think of him as the kid from the hospital, her heart could not help but soften for him. It was easy to dislike the man; it was harder to dislike the little boy who existed just below the surface of the man.

“I get it, though. ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ is definitely more upbeat,” Sadie said. “You sort of want to kill yourself when you hear ‘God Only Knows.’ ”
“That’s my favorite kind of music,” Abe said. “I call it afternoon music. You don’t want to listen to it too early in the day, or the day’ll be lost to you.”

[2/2]

Abe and Sadie smoked some pot, and he put on one of his favorites 45s, the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows,” which was the B-side to “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” Abe particularly liked incidents where the B-side had become more significant than the A-side.
“Can you believe that?” Abe said. “Who would ever think ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ was better than ‘God Only Knows’?”

[1/2]

Sam would later tell people that these mazes were his first attempts at writing games. “A maze,” he would say, “is a video game distilled to its purest form.” Maybe so, but this was revisionist and self-aggrandizing. The mazes were for Sadie. To design a game is to imagine the person who will eventually play it.

“Hyacinths symbolize sincerity and constancy of love. I’ve been married before, too. From that experience, and from being an expert in masonry, I know a lot about walls. Those rising high around your heart were built by amateurs. I intend to take them down.”

“Dying isn’t the important thing. It’s nothing more than the punctuation mark on the end of your life. It’s everything that came before that matters. Punctuation marks, most people skip right over them. They don’t even have a sound.”

As a person who can't smell, a lot of this book is entirely incomprehensible to me. Here's a passage I liked but can't relate to at all:

“Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will. The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it.”

Peeta fashioned some kind of incubator, and when the eggs hatched, mine was the first face those goslings saw. Sometimes they just graze on the green, but on fine days, we’ve been known to wander on over to the Meadow. Lenore Dove likes it best there, and I’m content where she’s content. Like the geese, we really did mate for life.

I didn’t want to let them in, her and Peeta, but the walls of a person’s heart are not impregnable, not if they have ever known love. That’s what Lenore Dove says, anyway.

I first saw the girl at the Hob when she was just a baby. Burdock was so proud of her, he toted her around everywhere. After he died in that mine explosion, she started coming alone, trading the odd squirrel or rabbit. Tough and smart, her hair in two braids then, reminding me for all the world of Louella McCoy, my sweetheart of old. And after she volunteered for the Games, that nickname couldn’t help but slip out.

Good-bye, Maysilee Donner, who I loathed, then grudgingly respected, then loved. Not as a sweetheart or even a friend. A sister, I’d said. But what is that exactly? I think about our journey — everything from sniping with her in those early days after the reaping to battling those pink birds. I guess that’s my answer. A sister is someone you fight with and fight for. Tooth and nail.

My hand seeks my flint striker for comfort, but finds only bare skin. They couldn’t even leave me that last token of Lenore Dove’s love. What did she think when they announced my score tonight? Since she didn’t get to witness all my reckless behavior here, she probably blames herself for me getting called out in the reaping. But how will she ever know that was only a teaspoon of trouble in my river of wrong?

The second Quarter Quell. Twice as many kids. No point in worrying, I tell myself, there’s nothing you can do about it. Like two Hunger Games in one. No way to control the outcome of the reaping or what follows it. So don’t feed the nightmares. Don’t let yourself panic. Don’t give the Capitol that. They’ve taken enough already.

“Hours later, out on the flatlands of the Piedmont, she saw the Appalachians sketched in gentle blue lines along the horizon. As they neared, peaks rose around them and forested mountains flowed softy into the distance as far as Kya could see.”

I started reading this book while on a road trip through the Appalachians and this is exactly what I saw.

"Well, we better hide way out there where the crawdads sing. I pity any foster parents who take you on." Tate's whole face smiled.

Slowly, she unraveled each word of the sentence: "There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot."
[…]
"You can read, Kya. There will never be a time again when you can't read."
"It ain't just that." She spoke almost in a whisper. "I wadn't aware that words could hold so much. I didn't know a sentence could be so full."
He smiled. "That's a very good sentence. Not all words hold that much."

Scupper went on. "Don't go thinking poetry's just for sissies. There's mushy love poems, for sure, but there's also funny ones, lots about nature, war even. Whole point of it— they make ya feel some-thing." His dad had told him many times that the definition of a real man is one who cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul, and does what's necessary to defend a woman.

I need a lot of sleep. More sleep than I’d like. I wish I could be one of those people who thrives on five hours a night, but I really need seven or eight—just to function. I’ll happily take nine. Ten, if you’re offering. I’m actually gonna lie down for a minute.

When I was in the throes of my baking phase, my oven broke, and, luckily, different friends were happy to host me for a few hours and let me fill their apartments with the smell of cinnamon while I refused to let them help, because YOU DON’T KNOW THE SYSTEM.

Baking is a really fun way to get people to like you. Being a good listener, a lively conversationalist, a loyal friend—it takes so much energy. Spend a couple hours alone in your kitchen and get the same effect? Sign me up! Sadly, I have less time for it now, but for a couple years, it was my whole identity.

We got stoned and watched scary movies. I smoked too much the night we watched The Amityville Horror and climbed up the back of the couch begging the boys to stop reading my thoughts.

So much significance is placed on something you put in a book, and I don’t care much for significance. Let’s agree now that we’re just having a conversation and I happen to talk more than I listen (true in real life as well).

That night, I resolved to keep the crazy inside my head where it belonged. Forever. But here’s the thing about crazy: It. Wants. Out.

Nothing is more absorbing than love. You don’t have time to be idle, because, being in love, you are idle. Love is vaguely aware that its only real distraction is work. So it regards it as a rival. And a rival is one thing it won’t tolerate. Yet love is a benign form of idleness, like soft refreshing rain.

The only thing more infuriating than the run-on sentences in this book is the mother's actions, or rather, inactions.

She got up suddenly and walked about her apartment, arranging and rearranging her belongings without conscious thought, as though her actions were merely the outward mechanics of an inward turbulence she could not so easily arrange.

she nodded gravely, and, making the soft sound a contented and pampered animal makes, she ran to her mother and embraced her with calculated spontaneity; and then smiling again, looking down in modesty, her shallow dimple plain for all to see, she held Mrs. Forsythe’s hand, pressed close to her thigh for protection, and left with her.”

2/2

How is this all 1 sentence? It's absolutely exhausting to read.

“She smiled her hesitant, charming smile; she curtseyed in the manner Mrs. Forsythe had recently taught her; she listened with solemn intensity when she was complimented, her eyes wide and innocent of guile; she was polite, dignified, and serious, and when Mrs. Forsythe said they must leave,

1/2

I am on the first page, and already it's holy run-on-sentences Batman!!

A large paragraph should never consist of just 1 mere sentence. I don't care to hear otherwise. Where are the periods? My heart cries out for more punctuation.