Connect The Dots

[notthatitreallymatters]

Liam can write a word on a page and he will think, in surprise, There is my father's p and here is his f and how odd that it comes to a man one day that he cannot uproot his father from him, like an unwanted plant from the soil. There are no boundary walls between them; the two are one and the same.

Land - Maggie O'Farrell

[notthatitreallymatters]

She prayed while standing near the priest in hopes it would give her request extra credibility. What she prayed for was nothing. She prayed that God would look on them and see the beauty of their existence and leave them alone.

Bel Canto - Ann Pachett

[notthatitreallymatters]

Despite the shocks behind us, Paul didn't live as a man who expected lightning to strike again at any moment. He lived as a man who knew a lightning strike was possible at any moment.

Ghost Stories - Siri Hustvedt

[notthatitreallymatters]

We all die, but I had him in my life, and because I had him, I'm not who I was when I met him but someone else - better, warmer, tougher, wiser.

Ghost Stories - Siri Hustvedt

[notthatitreallymatters]

The only truth we can be certain of is change. Whatever is happening now, wonderful or terrible, it will not remain as it is but become something else.

Ghost Stories - Siri Hustvedt

[notthatitreallymatters]

Only seconds after she smiled over a witty remark she had made to herself, she looks at his chair in the dining room, the blue chair where he ate breakfast every morning and ate dinner every night, the chair underneath which are scratches in the floorboards because he sat heavily in that chair and sometimes moved it while he was sitting. The scratches that annoyed her before he died are now traces of his body's living weight after he died. She buckles over, and, with her arms folded across her chest, she howls at the insensate walls, 'I want you back. I want you back."

Ghost Stories - Siri Hustvedt

[notthatitreallymatters]

"...when he starts feeling it - like he's swallowed a fishing weight, a sinker that's still on the line. It's a pendulum in his stomach, scraping his insides."

If I Survive You - Jonathan Escoffery

[notthatitreallymatters]

She spoke vehemently she did not discuss but stated, and her judgments were severe and capricious. She spoke about herself her tastes, her physical workings - as about a monumental mystery, something unique and final.

Runaway - Alice Munro

[notthatitreallymatters]

Fraenkel looked Faustian, with his small beard, his narrow face, his cape, his sensual mouth, a face all pointed, foxy, on a small undernourished body, with frail but willful hands pointing to directions, asserting, with his sharp index finger pointing. Romantic actor's gestures are vehement, almost too powerful for the frailness of his body.

The Diary of Anais Nin

[notthatitreallymatters]

It is not fear that keeps me from gathering myself together and surrendering to one life. It is that there is an Anaïs who cannot bring all the pieces together, who can be devoted, love, and still feel alone and divided.

Diary of Anais Nin

[notthatitreallymatters]

He stoops a little, like a scholar bent too long over books. One only sees his high brow and his crystal-gazer eyes. His sensual mouth is hidden in his beard.

Diary of Anais Nin

[notthatitreallymatters]

I understand her. She cannot be considered as a whole. She is composed of fragments. Only passion gives her a moment of wholeness.

The Diary of Anais Nin

[notthatitreallymatters]

Do I feel my own self definite, encompassable? I know its boundary lines. There are experiences I shy away from. But my curiosity, creativeness, urge me beyond these boundaries, to transcend my character. My imagination pushes me into unknown, unexplored, dangerous realms.

The Diary of Anais Nin

[notthatitreallymatters]

She has learned to wear a mask of detachment, has become so adept at it that someday, she fears, it may become her only face.

The Dream Hotel - Laila Lalami

[notthatitreallymatters]

She's so quiet that most of the time I'm startled to find her in the apartment. I'll enter a room and she'll stir, detaching herself from the cracking plaster walls, from the stained cabinets, and fright will pass through me like a wire.

Drown - Junot Díaz

[notthatitreallymatters]

She had a regular face, but it had a naked quality to it, a tendency to appear recently unmasked. Pale and clear and patrician, a surprise of dark, mannish eyebrows under her long light hair. Blue eyes, a direct nose, a small mouth, and an alto voice with little range that always came out calm and considerate, even when she was angry, even when she was sad.

The Ensemble - Aja Gabel

[notthatitreallymatters]

Her mercurial nature hummed with endless possibility. It was easy to mistake for confidence.

The Ensemble - Aja Gabel