With astonishment Aschenbach noticed that the boy was entirely beautiful. His countenance, pale and gracefully reserved, was surro...unded by ringlets of honey-colored hair, and with its straight nose, its enchanting mouth, its expression of sweet and divine gravity, it recalled Greek sculpture of the noblest period.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Some people say the business about the jolly fat person is a myth, that all of us chubbies are neurotic, sick, sad people. I disag...ree. Fat people may not be chortling all day long, but they're a hell of a lot nicer than the wizened and shriveled. Thin people turn surly, mean and hard at a young age because they never learn the value of a hot fudge sundae for easing tension. Thin people don't like gooey soft things because they themselves are neither gooey nor soft. They are crunchy and dull, like carrots. They go straight to the heart of the matter while fat people let things stay all blurry and hazy and vague, they way things actually are. Thin people want to face the truth. Fat people know there is no truth.... Thin people believe in logic. Fat people see all sides. The sides fat people see are rounded blobs, usually gray, always nebulous and truly not worth worrying about. But the thin person persists. "If you consume more calories than you burn," says one of my thin friends, "you will gain weight. It's that simple." Fat people always grin when they hear that. They know better.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Another hand thy sword shall wield, Another hand the standard wave,... Till from the trumpet's mouth is pealed The blast of triumph o'er thy grave.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I was always able to understand my friend who decided to quit smoking and who, through an effort of will, succeeded in doing so. O...ne morning, he opened the newspaper, read that the first H- bomb had exploded, found out about the bomb's admirable effects and went straight to the tobacconist's.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Yet resurrection is a sense of direction, resurrection is a bee-line,... straight to the horde and plunder, the treasure, the store-room, the honeycomb....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Love has meaning only insofar as it includes the idea of its continuance. Even what we rather glibly call a love affair, if it com...es to an end, may continue as a memory that is pleasing in our lives; we can renew the sense of privilege and reward of having been allowed such intimacy and sharing. But Lust dies at the next dawn, and when it returns in the evening, to search where it may, it is with its own past erased. Love wants to enjoy in other ways the human being whom it has enjoyed in bed; it looks forward to having breakfast. But in the morning Lust is always furtive. It dresses as mechanically as it undressed and heads straight for the door, to return to its own solitude.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
From outside one will always triumphantly impress theories upon the world and then fall straight into the ditch one has dug, but o...nly from inside will one keep oneself and the world quiet and true.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At it in its familiar twang: "My friend, Cut your own throat. Cut your own throat. Now! Now!"... September twenty-second, Sir, the bough Cracks with the unpicked apples, and at dawn The small-mouth bass breaks water, gorged with spawn.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I didn't have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, ...I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let's say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »