People named John and Mary never divorce. For better or for worse, in madness and in saneness, they seem bound together for eterni...ty by their rudimentary nomenclature. They may loathe and despise one another, quarrel, weep, and commit mayhem, but they are not free to divorce. Tom, Dick, and Harry can go to Reno on a whim, but nothing short of death can separate John and Mary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Now I must write personally; but I would not, if I didn't know that nothing we can say about ourselves is personal. I read the nov...el when I was fourteen or so; understanding very well the isolation described in it; responding to her sense of Africa the magnificent--mine, and everyone's who knows Africa; realizing that this was one of the few rare books. For it is in that small number of novels, with Moby Dick, Jude the Obscure, Wuthering Heights, perhaps one or two others, which is on a frontier of the human mind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
'No, no; for my virginity, When I lose that,' says Rose, 'I'll die':... 'Behind the elms last night,' cried Dick, 'Rose, were you not extremely sick?'LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Now, listen. I want somebody good, and I mean very good, to plant that gun. I don't want my brother coming out of that toilet with... just his dick in his hand.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,... And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail; When blood is nipped, and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl: Tu-whit, tu-whoo!-- A merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Intellectual sodomy, which comes from the refusal to be simple about plain matters, is as gross and abundant today as sexual perve...rsion and they are nowise different from one another.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We can only write well about our sins because it is too difficult to recall a virtuous act or even whether it was the result of go...od or evil motives.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Herman Melville was as separated from a civilized literature as the lost Atlantis was said to have been from the great peoples of ...the earth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So much of our lives is given over to the consideration of our imperfections that there is no time to improve our imaginary virtue...s. The truth is we only perfect our vices, and man is a worse creature when he dies than he was when he was born.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »