Bokelskere.no

Virgilian melancholy and subordination to destiny had less appeal to him now, he didn't know why. His soul had been altered by the alterations in his body. His soul was a shadow, a reflection of his body. Was that it?

The Tattooed Girl felt both a thrill of elation and alarm and lowered her burning eyes from his face that he should not perceive the wickedness in her heart.

Printed pages in books, who gives a damn for them? If the books added up to anything, there would not be so many of them but only a few.

Yet this was typical of her class, her type. An irony of history. Those in whom God does not believe, believe in God.

In Carmel Heights where nobody knew her name, the Tattooed Girl was made to feel unwanted and freaky. Nobody felt sorry for her here—that was for damned sure. If she went into a store, even the drugstore, sales clerks eyed her coolly like they were watching to see if she'd try to shoplift. In Banana Republic, Gap, Talbots she was approached and asked Can I help you, miss? in that tone of voice meaning You are not wanted here. They were reluctant to let her try on clothes as if fearing she would damage or contaminate anything that touched her skin and sometimes in her rage, she made certain she smeared lipstick onto a collar, or jammed a zipper, or wiped a patch of material between her legs or in the crack of her ass, biting her lip to keep from laughing. And catching sight of her swollen-looking white face and defiant red mouth in the distending convex mirror above the cashier's counter, she would think, trembling with indignation, That isn't me, that's somebody they made me be.

He hated raw emotion, melodrama. He hated the willful sabotage of reason, the triumph of the blood.

For she was one who, after she'd behaved badly, blamed the person to whom she'd behaved badly for causing such uncharacteristic behavior in her.

You seem to have lost faith in your talent. Or the courage of youth, which comes to the same thing.

There was something brutal yet innocent about her, you were drawn to admire even as you disapproved.

For even narcissists grieve: perhaps narcissists grieve most profoundly, losing those who'd existed to love them and to mirror their exaggerated sense of self-worth.

She, too, was quick with one-liners, honed in a lifetime of zestful vengeful repartee and quarrel. [...] The madness shining like liquid flame in those eyes.

Where he can work, there is a writer's home.

The girl's naivete was both charming and annoying. Yet he knew she was sincere. One must honor such sincerity.

This is why, he thought, so-called artists become surly and reclusive; not out of a sense of their superiority, but of their failure to be sufficiently superior.

Every man ought to make his life acceptable to others, but his death to himself alone.

Out of revulsion at the contemporary world, he had increasingly turned to the ancient world, drenched in its own species of blood, yet remote, sanctified by distance and the eloquence of its language.

No doubt there was something primitive and appealing about a cane to which both men and women responded unconsciously. A talismanic scepter, a sword. A sleekly stylized phallus.