“He held her face in his hands and his gaze warmed her sadness. “I don’t care how you got here. I’m just happy you were born.” He rubbed noses with hers. “Real happy.”
“There was no way to lead up to this gently. With a surge of assertiveness driven by desire as well as a couple of cosmopolitans, she took both his hands in hers and mustered up her confidence. “I want you to lick me cross-eyed.”
“You want me to what?”
“Okay, that sounded better inside my head.” She squeezed his hands. “I want sex. Great sex. Alex, let’s do it.”
“Embracing and being thankful for the family and friends I do have instead of yearning for the family I cannot know or have has helped erase the hollowness I felt when I first found out. When I consider my good health, sense of humor, adventurous side, creative gifts and even my quirky phobias, I am grateful that the two people responsible for creating me existed.” (Maddie Saunders, the heroine)”
“I’m sorry. I forgot this is Maddie’s world of sex and the rest of us star in it.”
She punctuated each word, poking her finger in his chest. “And you should be grateful.”
“Life’s a beach and then you have sex on it.” Maddie Saunders' philosophy”
“He sits with the pen in his hand, holding himself back from a descent into representations that have no place in the world, on the point of toppling, enclosed within a moment in which all creations lies open at his feet, the moment before he loosens his grip and begins to fall.”
“Built into the very structure of the egoic self is a need to oppose, resist, and exclude to maintain the sense of separateness on which its continued survival depends. So there is “me” against the “other,” “us” against “them.” The ego needs to be in conflict with something or someone. That explains why you are looking for peace and joy and love but cannot tolerate them for very long. You say you want happiness but are addicted to your unhappiness. Your unhappiness ultimately arises not from the circumstances of your life but from the conditioning of your mind.”
“There was Babylon and Nineveh; they were built of brick. Athens was gold marble columns. Rome was held up on broad arches of rubble. In Constantinople the minarets flame like great candles round the Golden Horn… Steel, glass, tile, concrete will be the materials of the skyscraper. Crammed on the narrow island the millionwindowed buildings will just glittering, pyramid on pyramid like the white cloudhead above a thunderstorm.”
“Even though I thought I wouldn't - could never - I do enjoy looking at him. It is like seeing one's self, like seeing one's self with a certain sense of remove.”
“But coming to terms with one’s sorrow is one thing; sharing it with strangers is quite another.”
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