Degrees of hose-edness

Impolite terms, used intramurally, were meant as philosophical rebukes to the misplaced preoccupations of those who believed in "identity politics," in the idea that all members of an oppressed minority were equally oppressed, which all too conveniently obscured the fact that there were real differences in the "shaftedness," also sometimes called the "degrees of hose-edness," that people of the same race or gender suffered.  "All suffering isn't equal" was an article of the PIH (Partners in Health) faith, generated in reaction to the many times when they had tried to raise money and instead had been offered lectures about the universality of suffering, or simply lines like "The rich have problems, too."

p. 216, Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder, Dec. 2010

Habituation = curse of humanity

It is the curse of humanity that it learns to tolerate event the most horrible siutations by habituation.

p. 61, Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder, Dec. 2010

Cynicism

He turned and gazed out the window.  A large sign was affixed to an airplane hangar across the tarmac.  It read PATRIA ES HUMANIDAD.  An internationalist assertion -- the only real nation is humanity.
"I think that's so lovely," Farmer said.
"I don't know, " I said.  "It seems like a slogan to me."
He looked away.  "I guess you're right."
I felt as though I'd punched him.  Among a coward's weapons, cynicism is the nastiest of all.  "No, it is lovely," I muttered.  "If it's really meant."

p. 209, Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder, Dec. 2010

False idols: personal efficacy & advancement

I know it sounds shallow, the opiate thing, needing to believe, palliating pain, but it didn't feel shallow.  It was more profound than other sentiments I'd known, and I was taken with the idea that in an ostensibly godless world that worshiped money and power or, more seductively, a sense of personal efficacy and advancement, like at Duke and Harvard, there was still a place to look for God, and that was in the suffering of the poor.

p. 85, Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder, Dec. 2010

Friends = literary characters

I have often noticed that we are inclined to endow our friends with the stability of type that literary characters acquire in the reader's mind.  No matter how many times we reopen 'King Lear,' never shall we find the good king banging his tankard in high revelry, all woes forgotten, at a jolly reunion with all three daughters and their lapdogs.  Never will Emma rally, revived by the sympathetic salts in Flaubert's father's timely tear.  Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical and conventional pattern we have fixed for them...We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular person the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he confirms to our notion of him every time we hear of him.  Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical.  We would prefer not to have known at all our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has seen.

p. 281, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, Aug/Sept. 2010 

The little given and the great promised

There was in the fiery phantasm a perfection which made my wild delight also perfect, just because the vision was out of reach, with no possibility of attainment to spoil it by the awareness of an appended taboo; indeed, it may well be that the very attraction immaturity has for me lies not so much in the limpidity of pure young forbidden fairy child beauty as in the security of a situation where infinite perfections fill the gap between the little given and the great promised - the great rosegray never-to-be-had.

p. 289, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, Aug/Sept. 2010

Happy abroad

Why did I hope we would be happy abroad?  A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.

p. 254, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, Aug/Sept. 2010

Wrong verbs

My west-door neighbor, who might have been a businessman or a college teacher, or both, would speak to me once in a while as he barbered some late garden blooms or watered his car, or, at a later date, defrosted his driveway (I don't mind if these verbs are all wrong)...

p. 189, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, Aug/Sept. 2010

At least one really good day

Every relationship has at least one really good day.  What I mean is, no matter how sour things go, there's always that day.  That day is always in your possession.  That's the day you remember.

p. 17, The Feast of Love, Charles Baxter, Sept. 2010

Scent of soul

I wanted to put a hand on her face or on her arm because I thought that if I did that, I would be so happy.  I just wanted to feel her skin but of course I wanted to feel the muscle beneath her skin and I wanted to get at the soul underneath that muscle because I could smell it.  I had never gotten a whiff of Bradley's soul and at that moment...I had a flash that I never would...But at that table I could smell her soul and I wanted it.

p. 39, The Feast of Love, Charles Baxter, Sept. 2010

Default-mode negatives: husband material

Was this the classic instance of a smart woman selling herself short?  As the weeks went on and I grew to know him better, I thought of all these default-mode negatives:  he seemed not ignoble, not ill-spoken, not a bully, not inconsiderate, not obnoxious, not a boor, not violent, not distressing, not disdainful, not a bad dresser, not unmindful, not dirty or smelly, and not particularly ironic.  He was not unhandsome.  He was not unattractive.  In other words, he was husband material.  Simple as that.

p. 138, The Feast of Love, Charles Baxter, Sept. 2010

Parents

The colors on the water were turning from magenta to a sort of hot pink, and I was having this insight that my parents had let me loose in the world without explaining anything of importance to me.

p. 216, The Feast of Love, Charles Baxter, Sept. 2010

Love

That was the night Agostino Vespucci fell in love for the first time, and understood that adoration was a journey too, that however determined he might be not to leave his native city he was doomed like all his footloose friends to walk down roads he did not know, the heart's pathways that would oblige him to enter places of danger, confront demons and dragons, and run the risk of losing not only his life but his soul as well.

p. 156, The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie, Nov/Dec 2010

Atheism

"If you were an atheist, Birbal," the emperor challenged his first minister, "what would you say to the true believers of all the great religions of the world?"..."I would say to them that in my opinion they were all atheists as well; I merely believe in one god less than each of them."  "How so?" the emperor asked.  "All true believers have good reasons for disbelieving in every god except their own," said Birbal, "and so it is they who, between them, give me all the reasons for believing in none."

p. 44, The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie, Nov/Dec 2010