Susan Vreeland · 434 pages
Rating: (6.5K votes)
“I've come to think that if doing something simple or silly can give a person pleasure, then, by God, do it”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Luncheon of the Boating Party
“He had a thought that amused him. "Figures, still life, landscape, AND an animal! Zola, eat your hat!" he bellowed.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Luncheon of the Boating Party
“At this stage of life, he'd better just lean into love, because if he fell, he feared he might break a hip.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Luncheon of the Boating Party
“If you want to preach, young man, you ought to wear some kind of clerical costume so people would be warned. In my mind, there are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them. I hate le misérabilisme. I’m in the shining business, not the darkening business.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Luncheon of the Boating Party
“She plucked a raspberry. Sweet juice, sweet pleasure. Within the tangle of tendrils, inside a blossom, a tiny bead was kisses and blessed by the sun, from which it took in light and warmth and heaven's rain imbued with the richness of the soil of France. All of the elements of the river world helped that bead to expand and multiply into sheer casings for sweet pulp, wedge together in a knobby globe until it released its juice in her mouth”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Luncheon of the Boating Party
“One more thing. She wears Patchouli. Every tart in Montmartre wears it. Place Pigalle reeks of it. If she wants to carry out her pose as an aristocrat, she ought to refine her tastes.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Luncheon of the Boating Party
“life we can’t control, she thought. We must accept the cork we are and stay afl, and bob gaily when we can. She”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Luncheon of the Boating Party
“How does one end a moment like this? It would kill her to feel him pull away. She had to be first. In a moment. One moment more. Yes. Now”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Luncheon of the Boating Party
“Valentine," I said, "are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Absolutely," he said. "If we put little wheels on our feet we could just roll around everywhere.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from MirrorMask
“It will always be yes..." I whispered, lightly kissing his lips...
"I will always be yours..." I continued, kissing along his jaw line...
"And I will always be by your side..." I finished kissing his neck.”
― Laury Falter, quote from Reckoning
“Reality [...] at every level from photons to philosophical fancies to the consciousness of living organisms was fluid [...]. To break apart and confine this reality into separate categories created by the mind was foolish and futile, much like trying to capture a ray of light inside a dark wooden box. This urge to categorize was the true fall of man [...] the infinite became finite, good opposed evil, thoughts hardened into beliefs, one's joys and discoveries became dreadful certainties, man became alienated from what he perceived as other ways and other things, and, ultimately, divided against himself, body and soul. [...] Always seeking meaning, always making their lives safe and comfortable, human beings do not truly live.”
― David Zindell, quote from The Broken God
“Accept that, like many men, you have a streak of the homoerotic in you. Why would you, why would anyone, want to be that straight?”
― Michael Cunningham, quote from By Nightfall
“I used to think that happiness, like God, was an idea weaker people were sold on, to manage the grief of a world with so much suffering. It is just easier, I thought, to decide that you are doing something wrong and you just need to buy the right thing, read the right book, find the right guru, or pray more to be happy than to accept that life is a great long heartbreak. Happiness is not what I imagined that mirage to be: an unending ecstasy or state of perpetual excitement. Not a high or a mirage, it is just being okay. My happiness is the absence of fear that there won't be enough -- enough money, enough power, enough security, enough of a cushion of these things to protect me from the everyday heartbreaks of being human. Heartbreak doesn't kill you. It changes you.”
― Melissa Febos, quote from Whip Smart: A Memoir
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