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Elise
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“In Heathrow a vast chunk of memory detached itself from a blank bowl of airport sky and fell on him. He vomited into a blue plastic canister without breaking stride.”
― Count Zero
― Count Zero
“Hotel Waldhaus
We had no luck with the weather and the guests at our table were repellent in every respect. They even spoiled Nietzsche for us. Even after they had had a fatal car accident and had been laid out in the church in Sils, we still hated them.”
― The Voice Imitator
We had no luck with the weather and the guests at our table were repellent in every respect. They even spoiled Nietzsche for us. Even after they had had a fatal car accident and had been laid out in the church in Sils, we still hated them.”
― The Voice Imitator
“The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”
― The Conduct of Life: By Ralph Waldo Emerson
― The Conduct of Life: By Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Of the not very many ways known of shedding one's body, falling, falling, falling is the supreme method, but you have to select your sill or ledge very carefully so as not to hurt yourself or others. Jumping from a high bridge is not recommended even if you cannot swim, for wind and water abound in weird contingencies, and tragedy ought not to culminate in a record dive or a policeman's promotion. If you rent a cell in the luminous waffle, room 1915 or 1959, in a tall business centre hotel browing the star dust, and pull up the window, and gently - not fall, not jump - but roll out as you should for air comfort, there is always the chance of knocking clean through into your own hell a pacific noctambulator walking his dog; in this respect a back room might be safer, especially if giving on the roof of an old tenacious normal house far below where a cat may be trusted to flash out of the way. Another popular take-off is a mountaintop with a sheer drop of say 500 meters but you must find it, because you will be surprised how easy it is to miscalculate your deflection offset, and have some hidden projection, some fool of a crag, rush forth to catch you, causing you to bounce off it into the brush, thwarted, mangled and unnecessarily alive. The ideal drop is from an aircraft, your muscles relaxed, your pilot puzzled, your packed parachute shuffled off, cast off, shrugged off - farewell, shootka (little chute)! Down you go, but all the while you feel suspended and buoyed as you somersault in slow motion like a somnolent tumbler pigeon, and sprawl supine on the eiderdown of the air, or lazily turn to embrace your pillow, enjoying every last instant of soft, deep, death-padded life, with the earth's green seesaw now above, now below, and the voluptuous crucifixion, as you stretch yourself in the growing rush, in the nearing swish, and then your loved body's obliteration in the Lap of the Lord.”
― Pale Fire
― Pale Fire
“I went over to the bed and knelt down beside it. I saw that she was still breathing, not in the hoarse, distressing way she had been breathing over the last few days, but almost serenely, as if the sacrament really had brought her relief. Then I took her pulse and felt it beating, rather irregularly, but beating nonetheless, and that was enough to assure me that she was still there. Finally, I carefully tried to prize open her eyelids, so that she could, if possible, see me, or so that I could at least see her, even if she could not see me. If my image could no longer penetrate the place where she now found herself, and I was, for her, merely a dull, meaningless thing, I wanted at least to be able to see my own image in those opaque pupils and feel myself floating on the surface of that world that had once been mine and which, now that it was lost, would bear me up as indifferently as a wave washing over a dead body. And I was thinking this even as I was trying to open her eyelids, which insisted on closing, while, meanwhile, everything inside me rebelled against being made an outcast, an exile, and I wanted her to see me, for my presence once more to illumine her inner world, which was, at that moment, heading into endless night, the desert where she would know nothing about me.”
― Crônica da Casa Assassinada
― Crônica da Casa Assassinada
The Roundtable
— 57 members
— last activity 7 hours, 9 min ago
Welcome to the Roundtable Our passions include literary fiction, the classics, and serious non-fiction. In 2024 we are reading the Palliser novels b ...more
Welcome to the Roundtable Our passions include literary fiction, the classics, and serious non-fiction. In 2024 we are reading the Palliser novels b ...more
21st Century Literature
— 3177 members
— last activity 4 hours, 14 min ago
For people interested in keeping up with the modern literary classics. We will be reading fiction and fine literature from 2000 to present, with the i ...more
For people interested in keeping up with the modern literary classics. We will be reading fiction and fine literature from 2000 to present, with the i ...more
Elise’s 2023 Year in Books
Take a look at Elise’s Year in Books. The good, the bad, the long, the short—it’s all here.
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