Wish I Wrote That

A co-worker lent me The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif a few years ago.  I lost it down the back of a bookshelf and just found it the other weekend.  It was a pretty interesting read - I'm always a sucker for books that use different and varied narrative styles to tell a story.  I appreciated how Soueif wove in the historical realities of 20th century Egypt under the thumb of English rule.  Some parts were a little too love-y for me, but on the whole it was an enjoyable read.

"How can it strike so suddenly?  Without warning, without preparation?  Should it not grow on you, taking its time, so that when the moment comes when you think 'I love', you know - or at least you imagine you know - what it is you love?  How can it be that a set of the shoulders, the rhythm of a stride, the shadow of a strand of hair falling on a forehead can cause the tides of the heart to ebb and to flow?"

Wish I Wrote That...

The curious came from far away.  A traveling carnival arrived with a flying acrobat who buzzed over the crowd several times, but no one paid any attention to him because his wings were not those of an angel, but rather, those of a...bat.  The most unfortunate invalids on earth came in search of health: a poor woman who since childhood had been counting her heartbeats and had run out of numbers; a Portuguese man who couldn't sleep because the noise of the stars disturbed him; a sleepwalker who got up at night to undo the things he had done while awake; and many others with less serious ailments.

- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings"

Thoughts for a Monday...

"Why do we get out of bed?" Mitch wondered.  "Is there any feeling better than being in bed?  What could possibly feel better than this?  What is going to happen in the course of my day that will be an improvement over lying on something very soft, underneath something very warm, wearing only underwear, doing absolutely nothing, all by myself?"  Every day, Mitch awoke to this line of reasoning.  Every day, the first move he made outside his sheets immediately destroyed the only flawless part of his existence.

- Chuck Klosterman, Downtown Owl

Wish I wrote that...

I was clumsy, easily distracted; I was "always in a dream."  [He] dug out the form of this hapless personality for me; out of perversity, defiantly, I felt myself pouring into it and setting hard.  I wasn't pretty or charming or malleable.  I went around with a suffering face.  I read my book with my fingers in my ears.

- Tessa Hadley, "Clever Girl"
Published in The New Yorker on 6 June 2011