“There is lace in every living thing: the bare branches of winter, the patterns of clouds, the surface of water as it ripples in the breeze.... Even a wild dog's matted fur shows a lacy pattern if you look at it closely enough.”
― Brunonia Barry, quote from The Lace Reader
“I realize the selfishness of children. We love them, and we revolve around their universe, but they don't revolve around ours.”
― Brunonia Barry, quote from The Lace Reader
“There is no wrong answer. Even so, it is easy to receive wrong results, simply by asking the wrong question.”
― Brunonia Barry, quote from The Lace Reader
“We all find means of anesthesia.”
― Brunonia Barry, quote from The Lace Reader
“I like soup, do you like soup?”
― Brunonia Barry, quote from The Lace Reader
“My name is Towner Whitney. No, that's not exactly true. My real first name is Sophya. Never believe me. I lie all the time.
I am a crazy woman... That last part is true.”
― Brunonia Barry, quote from The Lace Reader
“The same way they celebrate the witches, who never existed at all in the days of the witch trials but who thrive here in great numbers now.”
― Brunonia Barry, quote from The Lace Reader
“May’s haircuts were Marblehead’s version of a magic show. The townie kids used to form lines up and down Front Street to watch as Mr. Dooling pulled the rattail comb through my mother’s hair. With each pull, the comb would snag on something, then stop. As he reached into the mass to unwind the tangle, he would find and remove everything from sea glass to shells to smooth stones. In one particularly matted tangle, he found a sea horse. Once he even found a postcard sent from Tahiti to someone in Beverly Farms.”
― Brunonia Barry, quote from The Lace Reader
“There is lace in every living thing: the bare branches of winter, the patterns of clouds, the surface of water as it ripples in the breeze…. Even a wild dog’s matted fur shows a lacy pattern if you look at it closely enough.”
― Brunonia Barry, quote from The Lace Reader
Brunonia Barry
Born place: Salem, Massachusetts, The United States
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“Shall we go?' he murmured, perhaps regretting his decision to show me his army of plastic cartoon figurines.”
― Jon Ronson, quote from The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry
“Ohhhhh."
A lush-bodied girl in the prime of her physical beauty. In an ivory georgette-crepe sundress with a halter top that gathers her breasts up in soft undulating folds of the fabric. She's standing with bare legs apart on a New York subway grating. Her blond head is thrown rapturously back as an updraft lifts her full, flaring skirt, exposing white cotton panties. White cotton! The ivory-crepe sundress is floating and filmy as magic. The dress is magic. Without the dress the girl would be female meat, raw and exposed.
She's not thinking such a thought! Not her.
She's an American girl healthy and clean as a Band-Aid. She's never had a soiled or a sulky thought. She's never had a melancholy thought. She's never had a savage thought. She's never had a desperate thought. She's never had an un-American thought. In the papery-thin sundress she's a nurse with tender hands. A nurse with luscious mouth. Sturdy thighs, bountiful breasts, tiny folds of baby fat at her armpits. She's laughing and squealing like a four year-old as another updraft lifts her skirt. Dimpled knees, a dancer's strong legs. This husky healthy girl. The shoulders, arms, breasts belong to a fully mature woman but the face is a girl's face. Shivering in New York City mid-summer as subway steam lifts her skirt like a lover's quickened breath.
"Oh! Ohhhhh."
It's nighttime in Manhattan, Lexington Avenue at 51st Street. Yet the white-white lights exude the heat of midday. The goddess of love has been standing like this, legs apart, in spike-heeled white sandals so steep and so tight they've permanently disfigured her smallest toes, for hours. She's been squealing and laughing, her mouth aches. There's a gathering pool of darkness at the back of her head like tarry water. Her scalp and her pubis burn from the morning's peroxide applications. The Girl with No Name. The glaring-white lights focus upon her, upon her alone, blond squealing, blond laughter, blond Venus, blond insomnia, blond smooth-shaven legs apart and blond hands fluttering in a futile effort to keep her skirt from lifting to reveal white cotton American-girl panties and the shadow, just the shadow, of the bleached crotch.
"Ohhhhhh."
Now she's hugging herself beneath her big bountiful breasts. Her eyelids fluttering. Between the legs, you can trust she's clean. She's not a dirty girl, nothing foreign or exotic. She's an American slash in the flesh. That emptiness. Guaranteed. She's been scooped out, drained clean, no scar tissue to interfere with your pleasure, and no odor. Especially no odor. The Girl with No Name, the girl with no memory. She has not lived long and she will not live long.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“If you let reason alone control your choices, you lose the power of intuition. If you let emotion control your choices, you will be a slave to every minor tragedy.”
― Roy Huff, quote from The First Pillar
“The heart is a demanding tenant; it frequently makes a strong argument against common sense.”
― Julie Kibler, quote from Calling Me Home
“You spend more on fancy coffee than I do on meals. Why can’t you help the poor, the sick, the homeless?”
― John Grisham, quote from The Street Lawyer
Jack & Jill
Eleventh Grade Burns
Fear Nothing
Juliet Immortal
The War that Saved M...
The Jane Austen Book...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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