James Purdy · 300 pages
Rating: (257 votes)
“Some people confess in the flesh, others on paper.”
― James Purdy, quote from Eustace Chisholm and the Works
“Why, if Daniel Haws was to take out his naked cock and shake it in your face, you’d die of apoplexy.”
― James Purdy, quote from Eustace Chisholm and the Works
“Mexican marijuana, which he called the schoolboy’s consolation.”
― James Purdy, quote from Eustace Chisholm and the Works
“Amos, talk about pearls for teeth ... you got ‘em. No wonder the boys go for you, because I could too and if I had something to push between those pearly teeth I’d be first in line.”
― James Purdy, quote from Eustace Chisholm and the Works
“It was paper, as he had once joked to Amos, that he was really queer for.”
― James Purdy, quote from Eustace Chisholm and the Works
“One fine day you’ve got to give your body to somebody, or turn into a fully-fledged zombie.”
― James Purdy, quote from Eustace Chisholm and the Works
“Carla had the American woman’s fixed idea that love can cure, love can heal, love can bind a flowing wound.”
― James Purdy, quote from Eustace Chisholm and the Works
“She made no point of concealing the truth, for the truth was all she could bear now.”
― James Purdy, quote from Eustace Chisholm and the Works
“Ace sat down and inflated his cheeks like the wind gods in Italian paintings.”
― James Purdy, quote from Eustace Chisholm and the Works
“Most people have their buttons,” Eustace continued.”
― James Purdy, quote from Eustace Chisholm and the Works
“There was the cruel kind of Eustace silence.”
― James Purdy, quote from Eustace Chisholm and the Works
“Maureen had been born with the face of a gargoyle on the body of a sylph.”
― James Purdy, quote from Eustace Chisholm and the Works
“One morning while drinking coffee with Amos, Daniel Haws looked up suddenly, as if feeling the boy’s eyes on him, and said:
“Tryin’ to burn holes starin’ like that?”
“Guess I was just resting my eyes on you so as not to look at your wallpaper,” Amos gave a sour apology.
Daniel closed the book he was reading, a volume of Rhodes’s history of the United States, and took a careful look at the kitchen wallpaper.
“Yes,” he admitted, “that wallpaper is goddam ancient.”
― James Purdy, quote from Eustace Chisholm and the Works
“It just hangs there. This little... flap of flesh. And there's so much fuss that we make about it. I think the reason we fight wars is because we wear clothes. Because no one knows–between the men, I mean–who has the bigger... weenie. So. if I’m a guy with a small one, I’m going to build a really big building or take over a really big piece of land or write a really long book so the other men don’t know, right? But see, it never really works, that's the problem. I mean, you conquer the country, or whatever, but you’re still wearing clothes, so there’s no way to prove absolutely whose is bigger or smaller. And that’s what we call a civilized society. The whole world run by a bunch of men with pricks the size of pins.”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly
“Love in all its incantations, promises made with flesh and bone and word and intent.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Franco
“Чем меньше женщину мы любим,
Тем легче нравимся мы ей,
И тем ее вернее губим
Средь обольстительных сетей.”
― Alexander Pushkin, quote from Evžen Oněgin
“Remember from now on whenever something tends to make you unhappy, draw on this principle: 'This is no misfortune; but bearing with it bravely is a blessing.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings
“grief is long and messy and horrible—but it’s not an illness. And you cope how you cope. There’s no ‘well’ about it.”
― Sophie Kinsella, quote from Surprise Me
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