Category: reading

Other people’s words about … the sea

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The moonlight held all in bond, bleached and austere.
Jackie could hear, far away, the flat sea plodding in and out, dragging its pebbles after it.

From ‘Swords and Crowns and Rings’
by Ruth Park

Ruth Park wrote largely between 1950-90, yet her writing — its themes, characters, emotions, even its ‘Australian-ness’ — still rings true for me.

Note:
This is the first in an occasional series of quotes from writers writing about the sea.I live by the sea; I love the sea; and I set both of my books by the sea. Sea-themed quotes seem kind of appropriate!

Reading Elizabeth Taylor (again)

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Other people’s words

I’ve talked before about the writer Elizabeth Taylor: her pithy, devastating prose.

How’s this?

The town seemed to her to be England at its worst, full of people trying to enjoy themselves and not managing it for various reasons — perhaps chiefly those of the weather and the deeply-rooted dullness it had caused.

from ‘The Soul of Kindness‘
by Elizabeth Taylor

One sentence says so much, doesn’t it?

Reading Elizabeth Taylor

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On the lonely horror of writing

At the thought of work, of the book he was writing, must finish, his stomach lurched, just as if he had come unexpectedly on something repellent. He was scared, too. Nowadays, he was so frightened of sitting down to work that he had to drive himself to grapple with it.

from ‘The Soul of Kindness‘
by Elizabeth Taylor

I love Elizabeth Taylor’s novels.

Her observations about people, (English) society and life are  acute, pithy and devastating.

Try her sometime!

 

Note:
Two people drew my attention to the writing of the English novelist, Elizabeth Taylor, who died in 1975. One was my mother, an inveterate and highly intelligent reader. The other was one of my favourite bloggers, Jane Brocket.

Quote

Other people’s words again

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A word in your ear about the Brontes …

Lena has brought Wuthering Heights with her. It’s one of her favorites; she’s read it six times. Aviva borrowed it from her once but found Heathcliff repellent, Catherine incomprehensible. The characters gnashed their teeth, shrieked, struck their heads on hard objects until they bled. Everyone sneered and was agitated. Aviva doesn’t understand what Lena finds so compelling.
“It’s the way Heathcliff can’t think about anything but her,” says Lena. “The way he would rather be damned to hell — and they really believed in hell back then — than be separated from her.”
“I wouldn’t want him to think about me even for a minute,” says Aviva. “Him and those dogs? Please.”

from ‘The Virgins’
by Pamela Erens.

I’ve never been a fan of the Brontes. (Jane and Rochester? Please.)
It appears I’m in good company!

Other people’s words

Posted in anxiety, books, favourite quotes, life, moments of beauty, reading, staying true, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Emetophobia has governed my life, with a fluctuating intensity of tyranny, for some thirty-five years. Nothing — not the thousands of psychotherapy appointments I’ve sat through, not the dozens of medications I’ve taken, not the hypnosis I underwent when I was eighteen, not the stomach viruses I’ve contracted and withstood without vomiting — has succeeded in stamping it out … 

From ‘My age of anxiety’
by Scott Stossel

Sometimes, no cure exists for our ills.

We learn — slowly, painfully — to co-exist with them:

We learn to strive for grace.

♦

Note: Click on the following link if you want to know more about emetophobia. And for a review of the book I’ve quoted from, and more insight into anxiety as well as emetophobia, see Sally Satel’s article  from The Millions.