An Academic Affair Quotes

“Sincerity, my research had taught me, was often seen as a vulnerability. To earnestly express a feeling was a weakness. It was part of the reason people—including, but not limited to, Professor Christian Fisher—liked to hang shit on romance novels. There was something inherently earnest at their heart: a sincere love and hope and joy that readers often reacted to with the same feelings, a delicate flower that provoked some people to want to crush it.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“There was a famous narrative theorist named Paul Ricœur who distinguished between "clock time" and "human time." Clock time was measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days: the things we think of as the basic building blocks of time. Human time, though, was measured in events: the basic building blocks of story - and thus, because humans love nothing more than to narrativize their own experiences, of our lives.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“Eucatastrophe, in Tolkien’s words, is “the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn.’ ” In mine, it’s the moment in a story where, when it seems like all is lost, that things are going to be awful forever, that the only possible endings are full of misery and despair, something good happens.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“I will concede,” I said, “that you said a pretty mean thing to your sister. But you’ve spent fifteen years saying mean things to me and I have loved you every second of them anyway.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“I had a doctorate in literary
studies, but I did not have the words to explain what it felt like to be looked at
to be perceived – by Sadie Shaw”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“Everyone knows collaboration is more work than just doing it yourself.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“I told Chess pretty much everything, but one thing I'd kept carefully hidden from her was the existence of Goodreads. If she ever took to writing reviews, she would definitely make some people cry.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“There was a theorist called Zygmunt Bauman who wrote about "liquid love," the idea that late capitalism had "liquified" a lot of connections between people. When the world is a marketplace, he argued, we don't want to tie ourselves tightly and permanently to people. Instead, we always have one eye on the market, always on some level considering trading people for a better, newer, shinier version.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“But who would I even be without him to measure myself by?”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“I can make sensible arguments to myself all day long. There’s something in me that just doesn’t want to listen.” “It’s your dick”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“It's not a disaster; it's a dramatic term. It's all through the literature on ancient theater. Four stages: prologue, protasis, epitasis, catastrophe. The catastrophe is the moment when it all hangs on the precipice. If it goes one way, it's a tragedy, and everyone will probably die; if it goes the other, it's a comedy, and everyone will get their happy ending.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“I was in love with my wife.
I loved Sadie Shaw more than words could wield the matter, dearer than
eyesight, space and liberty.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“I don’t know when I figured it out. What is it that Darcy says to Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice? ‘I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun’?”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“Eucatastrophe is joy poignant as grief. The joy cannot be truly felt in a world where the grief isn’t possible.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“I will concede that you said a pretty mean thing to your sister. But you've spent fifteen years saying mean things to me and I have loved you every second of them anyway”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“pink and fluffy and nothing bad ever happens. Eucatastrophe is joy poignant as grief. The joy cannot be truly felt in a world where the grief isn’t possible.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“Eucatastrophe is joy poignant as grief. The joy cannot be truly felt in a world where the grief isn’t possible.” “And the catastrophe is the narrative fork between the joy and the grief.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“Eucatastrophe. Joy, poignant as grief.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“We were both wearing our own variety of armor. I’d pulled my hair back severely, put on my favorite don’t-fuck-with-me black jumpsuit, and sung “Vigilante Shit” quietly to myself as I applied eyeliner sharp enough to kill a man.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“I flexed my hand, trying to get the feeling of her sun-warm hair off my fingers.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“you.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“She’d had her hair out then, fiery red waves rippling down her back, and it had made me want to find a dark corner to weep in.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“The English language currently has about 170,000 words in common use. It is an embarrassment of words, more than most of us will ever use in our lives.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“...It was just about impossible not to turn over, pull her closer, and make an impassioned pitch to her on the idea of properly consummating our marriage.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“I am all fists. I am all teeth. One day, you're going to remember that and it is going to hurt me so much more when you leave me...”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“You said a pretty mean thing to your sister. But you've spent fifteen years saying mean things to me and I have loved you every second of them anyway.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“I threaded my fingers through her hair again”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“about Tolkien teaching at Oxford and basing Treebeard on C. S. Lewis after hearing his voice echoing down the halls? Sadie had said to me after the HR call about my partner hire. Vargas has the same vibe.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“She looked up at me. She’d done a good job on her makeup—God”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair

“I had a doctorate in literary studies, but I did not have the words to explain what it felt like to be looked at – to be perceived – by Sadie Shaw.”
― Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair