To live in a world meant for other people

Clifford and Claudia AnnLoretta’s Review 5 Star Review on Goodreads Dec 31, 2015 I dearly love to be knocked out of my expectations! I was fortunate enough to get a copy of this constantly moving, unrelentingly challenging, bemusing, amusing, hurtful, charming novel as a special offer for my Kindle, just when I needed a break. And what an enjoyable book it is. It deserves your full attention, it demands your full attention. It's not a lightweight bit of fluff, it's too human (?) to be that. Did Charles come from where he said he did? I don't know. Was the family he ended up with who they seemed to be? I don't know. But Charles is as convincing a character as I've met in a long time, there's never a moment when he's weakly portrayed, when the author wasn't living in his skin so that we could care about Charles, love with him, laugh with him, be in pain with him. When somebody else has read it, I'd love to talk about whether an...

I first read sections of this book as a child (7 or 8), tricked by its title. At the time I think it is meant for someone like me, pick it from the shelf at a friend's house. I don't understand most of what I read, but I do sense the emotional violence, the extreme tension. It is real. I can feel it. And it comes off the page. A remarkable discovery.  I have since re-read the book many times, seen the movie with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, and seen the play on Broadway with Bill Irwin and Kathleen Turner. It remains my favorite stage play and one of my favorite books in my library.  But nothing stays with me like that first time I pull it off the shelf as a child, get ripped open, exposed to the raw and emotional possibilities of words on the page. If any book has influenced the depths of my writing, this one has. My books on Amazon   |   Subscribe to this site   |   Contac t me   

A lot of people, especially this one psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if I'm going to apply myself when I go back to school next September. It's such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean how do you know what you're going to do until you do it? The answer is, you don't. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it's a stupid question. - J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye My books on Amazon   |   Subscribe to this site   |   Contac t me   

Outdoors, we knew, was the real terror of life. The threat of being outdoors surfaced frequently in those days. Every possibility of excess was curtailed with it. If somebody ate too much, he could end up outdoors. If somebody used too much coal, he could end up outdoors. People could gamble themselves outdoors, drink themselves outdoors. Sometimes mothers put their sons outdoors, and when that happened, regardless of what the son had done, all sympathy was with him. - Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye My books on Amazon   |   Subscribe to this site   |   Contac t me   

Just before I taped him, Mr. Clutter asked me - and these were his last words - wanted to know how his wife was, if she was all right, and I said she was fine, she was ready to go to sleep, and I told him it wasn't long till morning, and how in the morning somebody would find them, and then all of it, me and Dick and all, would seem like something they dreamed. I wasn't kidding him. I didn't want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat. - Truman Capote, In Cold Blood My books on Amazon   |   Subscribe to this site   |   Contac t me   

Nobody's asking you to remember every single goddamn Warner Brother's epic...just one! One single little epic! Bette Davis has peritonitis in the end...she's got this big black fright wig she wears all through the picture and she gets peritonitis, and she's married to Joseph Cotten or something... *** I said I was impressed, Martha. I'm beside myself with jealousy. What do you want me to do, throw up? *** Alright... what do you want me to say? Do you want me to say it’s funny, so you can contradict me and say it’s sad? Or do you want me to say it’s sad so you can turn around and say no, it’s funny. You can play that damn little game any way you want to, you know! *** Martha is 108... years old. She weighs somewhat more than that. *** George is bogged down in the History Department. He’s an old bog in the History Department, that’s what George is. A bog. . . . A fen. . . . A G.D. swamp. Ha, ha, ha, HA! A SWAMP! Hey, swamp! ...

My only company was an obese, ancient cat I inherited when the ancient Irish lady upstairs was evicted. The cat barely moved. Once a day she dragged herself to her food where she fell asleep with her head in the dish. - Larry Mitchell, My Life as a Mole My books on Amazon   |   Subscribe to this site   |   Contac t me   

Lydia looked good. The light came through the curtains and shone on her. She had an orange in her hand and was tossing it into the air. The orange spun through the sunlit morning.  - Charles Bukowski, Women My books on Amazon   |   Subscribe to this site   |   Contac t me