#ness

When your family is twice as weird as normal, you have to be twice as polite to authority, because authority hates weird. ↗

— Rosemary Clement-Moore

#politeness #family

This is new to us, you know? Your mother's sorry. She's sorry that she hurt your feelings, and she wants you to invite your girlfriend over for dinner." "So that she can make her feel bad and weird?" "Well she is kind of weird, isn't she?" Park didn't have the energy to be angry. He sighed and let his head fall back on the chair. His dad kept talking. "Isn't that why you like her? ↗

— Rainbow Rowell

#relationships #weirdness #family

Thank you to Giulia Fani, Joan Spence and my sister for the rooms and desks they loaned me. ↗

— Moez Surani

#familial-perspectives #favoritism #floaters #graciousness #politicized-spaces

The dead can forgive. The dead can be forgiven. The rest of us have better things to do. (Monza Murcatto) ↗

— Joe Abercrombie

#forgiveness

This evening I begin a notebook. If anyone reads this, I trust they will forgive my overuse of "I". I can't stop it. I'm writing this. ↗

— Jonathan Franzen

#i #forgiveness

There are three kinds of big endings: Revenge. Tragedy. Forgiveness. Revenge and Tragedy often happen together. Forgiveness unblocks the future." (p.225) ↗

— Jeanette Winterson

#forgiveness

A shell in the pit," said I, "if the worst comes to worst will kill them all." The intense excitement of the events had no doubt left my perceptive powers in a state of erethism. I remember that dinner table with extraordinary vividness even now. My dear wife's sweet anxious face peering at me from under the pink lampshade, the white cloth with it silver and glass table furniture—for in those days even philosophical writers had luxuries—the crimson-purple wine in my glass, are photographically distinct. At the end of it I sat, tempering nuts with a cigarette, regretting Ogilvy's rashness, and denouncing the shortsighted timidity of the Martians. So some respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have lorded it in his nest, and discussed the arrival of that shipful of pitiless sailors in want of animal food. "We will peck them to death tomorrow, my dear. ↗

— H.G. Wells

#dodos #extinction #foreshadowing #overconfidence #shortsightedness

Even feigning surprise, pretending it was unexpected and saying a ritual thanks, is surely wiser than just expecting everything so carelessly. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#food #food

From "Lunchtime At The Justice Cafe" : The waitress snarled a grin that lasted just long enough to show a mouthful of stained yellowed teeth, then turned suddenly serious. “‘Course I’m not the one to talk about these folks, I ‘spose. You see, I used to do a bit of eavesdroppin’ in my day before the sheriff put a stop to that.” 

She lifted the stringy blond hair from the side of her face, the opposite side from where she had hidden her pencil. There was a small hole about the size of a quarter where her ear should have been. “As you can see, Mr. McAllister, Sheriff Sweet puts a fairly high price on mindin’ your own business in Justice,” she added, refilling his cup. “You want some pie?” 


— Ken Goldman

#fried-food #goldman #horror #business

There's a fine line between forgiveness and denial. ↗

— Janet Rebhan

#fine-line #forgiveness #forgiveness