Steven R. > Books: literature‎ (2352)

You think you are being good to me, but instead you are doing me great harm!

"But, I tell you, if one is born and one dies! To be born, Monsignor: did you want to be born? I did not. And between one case and the other, both

"But, I tell you, if one is born and one dies! To be born, Monsignor: did you want to be born? I did not. And between one case and the other, both independent of our will, so many things happen which all of us wish had not happened and to which we resign ourselves reluctantly.

"What can I do if France can't produce any good theater and we are reduced to putting on Pirandello plays which you have to be lucky to understand

"What can I do if France can't produce any good theater and we are reduced to putting on Pirandello plays which you have to be lucky to understand and which are written in a way never to please either critics or actors or public."

"Is it—I'm not certain—possible to love someone if your first interest is the use you can make out of him? Doesn't the gainful motive, and the guilt a

"Is it—I'm not certain—possible to love someone if your first interest is the use you can make out of him? Doesn't the gainful motive, and the guilt accruing to it, halt the progression of other emotions? It can be argued that even the most decently coupled people were initially magnetized by the mutual-exploitation principle—sex, shelter, appeased ego; but still that is trivial, human: the difference between that and truly usinganother person is the difference between edible mushrooms and the kind that kill: Unspoiled Monsters." (22-23)

"If there is one thing rottener than another in a pretty blighted world, one thing which gives a fellow the pip and reduces him to the condition of an

"If there is one thing rottener than another in a pretty blighted world, one thing which gives a fellow the pip and reduces him to the condition of an absolute onion, it is hopeless love." (75)

"'I've missed you dreadfully,' she said, and felt the words inadequate as she uttered them.
'What ho!' said Ginger, also internally condemning the poverty of speech as a vehicle for thought." (257)

"Would I were lying stretched out in my comfortable bed, Mr. Barrell, just wasting slowly, painlessly away, keeping up my strength with arrowroot a

"Would I were lying stretched out in my comfortable bed, Mr. Barrell, just wasting slowly, painlessly away, keeping up my strength with arrowroot and calves-foot jelly, till in the end you wouldn't see me under the blankets any more than a board. [...] Oh no coughing or spitting or bleeding or vomiting, just drifting gently down into a higher life, and remembering...all the silly unhappiness...as though…it had never happened."