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Memoirs Quotes

“Десь далеко-далеко, на Сході республіки, зовсім поруч із державним кордоном, небо пахне ранковим лісом, пахне, зовсім по-особливому, брезентовими наметами і сосновими гілками, що кладуть на ці намети свої важкі лапи. Я йду довгою-довгою лісовою доріжкою, ліворуч від мене і праворуч від мене — високі і теплі сосни, які зігрівають своїм диханням пісок навколо себе, і повітря, і ранковий суботній ліс, і птахів, що трапляються час від часу, і загалом — усе це небо, і, очевидно, державний кордон — сосни це такі собі батарейки, котрі пустили коріння, якраз вздовж ріки, ріку видно за стовбурами ліворуч, і ми йдемо вздовж ріки, власне ми йдемо вгору, проти руху води, мені шість років, я дуже люблю ліс і ріку, а головне — я люблю вікенд, мені цілком зрозуміло, що сосни на вікенд особливо теплі, а небо — особливо мирне. На мені якась дурацька футболка і дурацькі шорти, і запилені сандалети, якими я буцаю соснові шишки, підіймаючи хмарки ранкового пилу, тоді моя подружка повертається до мене і просить, аби я заспокоївся і такого не робив. Моїй подружці 16, вона погодилась зі мною погуляти, власне, її попросили мої батьки, котрі товаришують із її батьками, вони всі залишились на річковому пляжі, сидять собі і готують салати зі свіжої вологої городини, плавають у ранковій ріці, попереду цілий вікенд, тож вони займаються своїми нецікавими дорослими справами, натомість я знайшов серед сосен доріжку і моя знайома без особливого, слід завважити, бажання, повела мене по ній, так, щоби я врешті пройшовся і заткнувся і вже нікого не діставав, хоча вона до мене добре ставиться, вірніше, це я за нею постійно тягаюсь, але вона тримається доволі добре і особливих претензій до мене не висловлює — так лише — аби не здіймав пил, аби не хапав її за руки, одне слово — не поводив себе як дебіл. Мені подобається пісок під ногами, мені подобається мокра трава на піску, мені подобаються сосни, в яких тривожно перетікають електрони, мені подобаються крикливі безтурботні птахи на високих соснових гілках, мені подобається небо, тому що воно тягнеться далеко-далеко і ніколи не закінчується, це мені подобається найбільше, я дуже люблю, коли щось ніколи не закінчується, і небо саме з таких речей, мені подобається, що ця доріжка теж не закінчується, теж тягнеться без кінця проти руху води, то наближаючись до неї, то знову закочуючись за стовбури, нарешті моя знайома не витримує, добре, каже, пішли скупаємось і назад, я намагаюсь виторгувати в неї ще з півкілометра, але вона говорить — досить, купатись і назад, і я змушений із цим змиритись. Вона сходить зі стежки і йде просто до води, я намагаюсь не відставати, йду слідом і розглядаю її чорний блискучий купальник, такі тоді, в кінці 70-х, саме були в моді, її купальник особливий — по його чорному тлу розсипані жовті, червоні та помаранчеві листки, справжній листопад, хоча в листопаді, здається, ніхто і не купається, але в неї справжній падолист на тілі, і тіло в неї — красиве й міцне, їй дуже пасує це листя, це навіть я у свої 6 розумію, інакше б я за нею не йшов, вода ще не встигла прогрітись, берег порожній і прохолодний, моя подружка підрулює до води і починає поступово в неї входити, я дивлюсь, як під водою зникають її стопи, її високі тьмяні литки, її коліна, її стегна, врешті вона падає на поверхню води, топлячи в ній все своє листя — і жовте, і червоне, і помаранчеве, і повертається до мене — давай, кричить, давай, іди сюди, холодно, кажу я з берега, перестань, кричить вона, нічого не холодно, іди сюди, вона випливає на середину ріки, течія починає зносити її вниз, і я раптом лякаюсь, що ось її понесе вниз, а я залишусь тут сам й буду стояти на цьому березі нікому не потрібний, перед холодною глибокою водою, котра тече невідомо куди, і я не витримую і стрибаю у воду, навіть забувши, що не вмію плавати, і рухаюсь до неї, вона мене помічає і починає підпливати до берега, я б'ю по воді руками, намагаючись не захлинутись ще на мілкому.”

“I had now also got to deal with the fate of my horses and my dogs... In the end I decided to give them to my friends. I rode in to Nairobi on my favourite horse, Rouge, going very slowly and looking round to the North, and the South. It was a very strange thing to Rouge, I thought, to be going in by the Nairobi road, and not to be coming back. I installed him, with some trouble, in the horse-van of the Naivasha train, I stood in the van and felt, for the last time, his silky muzzle against my hands and my face. I will not let thee go, Rouge, except thou bless me. We had found together the riding-path down to the river amongst the Native shambas and huts, on the steep slippery descent he had walked as nimbly as a mule, and in the brown running river-water I had seen my own head and his close together. May you now, in a valley of clouds, eat carnations to the right and stock to the left.”

“Passing through the early fog, the fruitseller’s boat nudged the edge of the canal beside the Palazzo Malipiero. All around was stillness. Casanova whispered to me, “This is the type of pause that occurs just in the instant before la petite mort. The breath held before the gasp followed by the exquisite release.”

“I lift the lid of the chest. Inside, the air is musty and stale, held hostage for years in its three-foot-by-four-foot tomb. I lean in to survey the contents cautiously, then pull out a stack of old photos tied with twine. On top is a photo of a couple on their wedding day. She's a young bride, wearing one of those 1950's netted veils. He looks older, distinguished- sort of like Cary Grant or Gregory Peck in the old black-and-white movies I used to watch with my grandmother. I set the stack down and turn back to the chest, where I find a notebook, filled with handwritten recipes. The page for Cinnamon Rolls is labeled "Dex's Favorite." 'Dex.' I wonder if he's the man in the photo. There are two ticket stubs from 1959, one to a Frank Sinatra concert, another to the movie 'An Affair to Remember.' A single shriveled rosebud rests on a white handkerchief. A corsage? When I lift it into my hand, it disintegrates; the petals crinkle into tiny pieces that fall onto the living room carpet. At the bottom of the chest is what looks like a wedding dress. It's yellowed and moth-eaten, but I imagine it was once stark white and beautiful. As I lift it, I can hear the lace swishing as if to say, "Ahh." Whoever wore it was very petite. The waist circumference is tiny. A pair of long white gloves falls to the floor. They must have been tucked inside the dress. I refold the finery and set the ensemble back inside. Whose things are these? And why have they been left here? I thumb through the recipe book. All cookies, cakes, desserts. She must have loved to bake. I tuck the book back inside the chest, along with the photographs after I've retied the twine, which is when I notice a book tucked into the corner. It's an old paperback copy of Ernest Hemingway's 'The Sun Also Rises.' I've read a little of Hemingway over the years- 'A Moveable Feast' and some of his later work- but not this one. I flip through the book and notice that one page is dog-eared. I open to it and see a line that has been underscored. "You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another." I look out to the lake, letting the words sink in. 'Is that what I'm trying to do? Get away from myself?' I stare at the line in the book again and wonder if it resonated with the woman who underlined it so many years ago. Did she have her own secret pain? 'Was she trying to escape it just like me?”

“You say you reject your gender. But that isn’t right. Your gender is whatever you make it. It is your sex you reject. It is your sex you recognize when you like your dress but not the way it fits. It is your sex you try to hide when you tuck your penis or tighten your corset. It is your sex you hope to alter with hormones. But your sex is your flesh. You are no poltergeist enmeshed in skin and bone and brain. You are skin and bone and brain. A war upon your flesh is a war upon yourself.”

“I poured too much of myself into you. I lost too much. Even my life before you feels suspicious. My relatives are old and I have no heirs. I counted on you to take my memories, to be their witness, to give them a home. You were family. You were an extension of me. My past seems like an illusion now, the mad fancy of someone who no longer exists.”

“Granny Trill and Granny Wallon were traditional ancients of a kind we won’t see today, the last of that dignity of grandmothers to whom age was its own embellishment. The grandmothers of those days dressed for the part in that curious but endearing uniform which is now known to us only through music-hall. And our two old neighbours, when setting forth on errands, always prepared themselves scrupulously so. They wore high laced boots and long muslin dresses, beaded chokers and candlewick shawls, crowned by tall poke bonnets tied with trailing ribbons and smothered with inky sequins. They looked like starlings, flecked with jet, and they walked in a tinkle of darkness. Those severe and similar old bodies enthralled me when they dressed that way. When I finally became King (I used to think) I would command a parade of grandmas, and drill them, and march them up and down - rank upon rank of hobbling boots, nodding bonnets, flying shawls, and furious chewing faces. They would be gathered from all the towns and villages and brought to my palace in wagon-loads. No more than a monarch’s whim, of course, like eating cocoa or drinking jellies; but far more spectacular any day than those usual trudging guardsmen.”

“As libertines we seek to find and provide pleasures for others before pleasing ourselves. Libertines are never boorish, profane or blasphemous. We seek to lessen any cause for offence while maximizing pleasure. After our liaisons, our return is eagerly anticipated, and our departure is mourned. For most men the reverse is the case. In a world where most men are barely on before they are off again, we take the time and the care to be gentle lovers and build the sighs and the panting of true delight.”

“Hester Lipp had written Where the Sidewalk Starts, an inexplicably acclaimed book of memoir, recounting — in severe language and strange, striking imagery — Lipp's childhood and adolescence on a leafy suburban street in Burlington. Her house was large and well-kept, her schooling uneventful, her family — the members of which she described in scrupulous detail — uniformly decent and supportive. Sidewalk was blurbed as a devastatingly honest account of what it meant to grow up middle class in America. Amy, who forced herself to read the whole thing, thought the book devastatingly unnecessary. The New York Times had assigned it to her for a review, and she stomped on it with both feet. Amy's review of Sidewalk was the only mean-spirited review she ever wrote. She had allowed herself to do this, not because she was tired of memoirs, baffled by their popularity, resentful that somehow, in the past twenty years, fiction had taken a backseat to them, so that in order to sell clever, thoroughly imagined novels, writers had been browbeaten by their agents into marketing them as fact. All this annoyed her, but then Amy was annoyed by just about everything. She beat up on Hester Lipp because the woman could write up a storm and yet squandered her powers on the minutiae of a beige conflict-free life. In her review, Amy had begun by praising what there was to praise about Hester's sharp sentences and word-painting talents and then slipped, in three paragraphs, into a full-scale rant about the tyranny of fact and the great advantages, to both writer and reader, of making things up. She ended by saying that reading Where the Sidewalk Starts was like "being frog-marched through your own backyard.”

“America needs to know this story because our Constitution is being attacked, our freedom threatened, innocent people are being framed and murdered, and the outlaw motorcycle club culture is on the verge of extinction.” – Jeff “Twitch” Burns, Patriot Gangster: Volume 1, Evolution of an Outlaw”

“Every dish I cooked exhumed a memory. Every scent and taste brought me back for a moment to an unravaged home. Knife-cut noodles in chicken broth took me back to lunch at Myeondong Gyoja after an afternoon of shopping, the line so long it filled a flight of stairs, extended out the door, and wrapped around the building. The kalguksu so dense from the rich beef stock and starchy noodles it was nearly gelatinous. My mother ordering more and more refills of their famously garlic-heavy kimchi. My aunt scolding her for blowing her nose in public. Crispy Korean fried chicken conjured bachelor nights with Eunmi. Licking oil from our fingers as we chewed on the crispy skin, cleansing our palates with draft beer and white radish cubes as she helped me with my Korean homework. Black-bean noodles summoned Halmoni slurping jjajangmyeon takeout, huddled around a low table in the living room with the rest of my Korean family. I drained an entire bottle of oil into my Dutch oven and deep-fried pork cutlets dredged in flour, egg, and panko for tonkatsu, a Japanese dish my mother used to pack in my lunch boxes. I spent hours squeezing the water from boiled bean sprouts and tofu and spooning filling into soft, thin dumpling skins, pinching the tops closed, each one slightly closer to one of Maangchi's perfectly uniform mandu.”

“Memories fill my mind, as though they are my own, of not just events from Gideon's life, but of various flavors and textures: breast milk running easily down into my stomach, chicken cooked with butter and parsley, split peas and runner beans and butter beans, and oranges and peaches, strawberries freshly picked from the plant; hot, strong coffees each morning; pasta and walnuts and bread and brie; then something sweet: a pan cotta, with rose and saffron, and a white wine: tannin, soil, stone fruits, white blossom; and---oh my god---ramen, soba, udon, topped with nori and sesame seeds; miso with tofu and spring onions, fugu and tuna sashimi dipped in soy sauce, onigiri with a soured plum stuffed in the middle; and then something I don't know, something unfamiliar but at the same time deeply familiar, something I didn't realize I craved: crispy ground lamb, thick, broken noodles, chili oil, fragrant rice cooked in coconut milk, tamarind... and then a bright green dessert---the sweet, floral flavor of pandan fills my mouth.”

“Once more, I was left alone. My way of dealing with emotional distress was to immediately engage my heart and intellect in a search for new opportunities to develop. I knew that if I wanted to continue to live my life successfully, I would have to rise to unbelievable heights.”

“Where, where all the summer dogs leaping like dolphins in the wind-braided and unbraided tides of what? Where lightning smell of Green Machine or trolley? Did the wine remember? It did not? Or seemed not, anyway. Somewhere, a book said once, all the talk ever talked, all the songs ever sung, still lived, had vibrated way out in space and if you could travel to Far Centauri you could hear George Washington talking in his sleep or Caesar surprised at the knife in his back. So much for sounds. What about light then? All things, once seen, they didn't just die, that couldn't be. It must be then that somewhere, searching the world, perhaps in the dripping multiboxed honeycombs where light was an amber sap stored by pollen-fired bees, or in the thirty thousand lenses of the noon dragonfly's hemmed skull you might find all the colors and sights of the world in any one year. Or pour one single drop of this dandelion wine beneath a microscope and perhaps the entire world of July Fourth would firework out in Vesuvius showers. This he would have to believe. And yet... looking here at this bottle which by its number signalized the day when Colonel Freeleigh had stumbled and fallen six feet into the earth, Douglas could not find so much as a gram of dark sediment, not a speck of the great flouring buffalo dust, not a flake of sulphur from the guns at Shiloh...”

“Never wait for a woman to show interest. It is not her interest we seek, but her desire,” whispered Casanova. “Intrigue her, tantalize her, flatter her and let her know that she is the only one in the room that you truly want. Women want to be admired and desired above all others. Even if they refuse you, they will never forget you.”

“The air in Africa is more significant in the landscape than in Europe, it is filled with loomings and mirages, and is in a way the real stage of activities. In the heat of the midday the air oscillates and vibrates like the string of a violin, lifts up long layers of grass-land with thorn-trees and hills on it, and creates vast silvery expanses of water in the dry grass.”

“1) “How did I end up down this rabbit hole of being obsessed with men on the DL (down-low)? Why did I prefer playing more in the straight arena with the closet cases (as they were called in my day) and the bisexual men over the gay ones?” 2) “We didn’t identify in my day; you were either gay, bisexual, or straight. People will always label others or pigeonhole them without even knowing for sure who they really are. They presumably stereotype and judge just by your outward appearance.” 3) “It wasn't until the seventh grade that Sister Gloria would be my social studies teacher, and I began leaning more towards being an extrovert than the anxious introvert that I was. All the accolades go to her. She lit the flame under my ass that would be the catalyst for my advocacy. Her podium, located front and center of the classroom, became ground zero for me and where I found my voice.” 4) “Their taunting was my kryptonite. My peers hated me for no other reason than the fact that they thought I was gay. I was only thirteen and often wondered how they knew who I was before I did.” 5) “Evangelical Christian Anita Bryant (First Lady of Religious Bigotry), along with her minions, led a crusade against the LGBTQ community back in 1977 and said we were trying to recruit children and that ‘Homosexuals are human garbage.’ My first thoughts were, how unchristian and deplorable of her to even say something like that, not to mention, to make it her life’s mission promoting hate.” 6) “Are there any more Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. kind of Christians in this country today? Dr. King knew about his friend’s homosexuality and arrest. Being a religious man and a pastor, Dr. King could have cast judgment and shunned Bayard Rustin like so many other religious leaders did at the time. But he didn’t. That, to me, is the true meaning of being a Christian. He loved Bayard unconditionally and was unbiased towards his sexual orientation. Dr. King was not a counterfeit Christian and practiced what he preached—and that, along with remembering what Jesus had said, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ is the bottom line to Christianity and all faiths.” 7) “We are all God’s children! That is what I was taught in Catholic school. God doesn’t make mistakes—it’s as simple as that. Love is love—period! I don’t need anyone’s validation or approval, I define myself.” 8) “You will bake our cakes, you will provide us our due healthcare, you will do our joint tax returns, and yes, you will bless our unions, too. Otherwise, you cannot call yourselves Christians or even Americans, for that matter.” 9) “The torch has been passed. But we must never forget the LGBT pioneers that have come before and how they fought in the streets for our lives. Never forget the Stonewall riots of 1969 nor the social stigma put upon us during the HIV/AIDS epidemic from its onset in the early 1980s. Remember how many died alone because nobody cared. Finally, keep in mind how we were all pathologized and labeled in the medical books until 1973.”

“I'd rather have a heart of gold Than all the treasure of the world.”

“What the house kept us, we kept. The buttonhooks, the cotton gin advertisement, the letters, the filthy lady's glove, gnarled and frozen in a claw, all of it were framed under glass, in shadow boxes, displayed in the parlor by the guest book. We even managed to save the silvery gilt of wallpaper and the peacock frieze we found like a gift under the brown and orange daisy paper in the hallway. Lost objects in a house are like memories tucked in the gray folds of our brains. They will resurface. Eventually, they will come back.”

“Storytelling is ultimately the only way that we know besides song, dance, painting, and music to share with our tribesmen what it means to be human, express the indefinable feelings that unite humankind.”

“The story of what it means to be human is never complete. Every generation will produce its own share of comedies and tragedies, fools and geniuses. What the Greeks started the rest of the world will continue to build upon. The old stories will continue to explicate where we came from, while the new stories will illuminate in what direction humankind trends. The collection of future stories of humanity will add to the cumulative library of stories that past writers told, an anthology of collaborative stories will shed light upon the singleness of the human spirit in its aspirations, powers, vicissitudes, and wisdom.”

“I knew even then that she was right. An en is a karmic bond lasting a lifetime. Nowadays many people seem to believe their lives are entirely a matter of choice; but in my day we viewed ourselves as pieces of clay that forever show the fingerprints of everyone who has touched them. Nobu's touch had made a deeper impression on me than most. No one could tell me whether he would be my ultimate destiny, but I had always sensed the en between us. Somewhere in the landscape of my life Nobu would always be present. But could it really be that of all the lessons I'd learned, the hardest one lay just ahead of me? Would I really have to take each of my hopes and put them away where no one would ever see them again, where not even I would ever see them?”

“Quickly she shredded the cabbage on the chopping block and tossed it along with the onion and tomatoes in a blue Pyrex bowl. Then she slid the lamb chops, encrusted with fresh rosemary, into the oven. While the lamb baked, she brushed her hair in the washroom and pinned it back again. Then she zipped on a silk floral dress she'd purchased in Bristol and retrieved her grandmother's rhinestone necklace, one of the few family heirlooms her mother packed for her, to clasp around her neck. At the foot of the bed was the antique trunk she'd brought from her childhood home in Balham more than a decade ago. Opening the trunk, she removed her wedding album along with her treasured copy of 'The Secret Garden' and the tubes of watercolors her father had sent with her and her brother. Her father hoped she would spend time painting on the coast, but Maggie hadn't inherited his talent or passion for art. Sometimes she wondered if Edmund would have become an artist. Carefully she took out her newest treasures- pieces of crystal she and Walter hd received as wedding presents, protected by pages and pages of her husband's newspaper. She unwrapped the crystal and two silver candlesticks, then set them on the white-cloaked dining table. She arranged the candlesticks alongside a small silver bowl filled with mint jelly and a basket with sliced whole-meal bread from the bakery. After placing white, tapered candles into the candlesticks, she lit them and stepped back to admire her handiwork. Satisfied, she blew them out. Once she heard Walter at the door, she'd quickly relight the candles. When the timer chimed, she removed the lamb chops and turned off the oven, placing the pan on her stovetop and covering it with foil. She'd learned a lot about housekeeping in the past decade, and now she was determined to learn how to be the best wife to Walter. And a doting mother to their children. If only she could avoid the whispers from her aunt's friends.”

“The best way to build a business is to attract new guests while warmly welcoming those who are returning to you once again. To the new readers of this series, we say, "Welcome to Holly Cottage." To those readers who are returning to read the second book in the series we say, "Welcome to your Return to Holly Cottage, a book where we hope each reader will arrive as a guest and depart as a friend.”

“Language is our identity tool and by using experience, observation, and imagination, we each discover the words that give voice to our lives. To tell our stories is the human method of perforating our isolation tanks, the means to encapsulate what we previously learned, and the mechanism that allows us to enter the universal dialogue of compassion. Sharing the pandemonium of our life’s stories full of grime, love, noise, and steeped in emotional chaos is the act that ultimately binds us to our family, friends, and community. All lovers know each other stories. Farmers, villagers, big city hobnobs, and the citizens from all nations share a conjoined thread through storytelling that seriously investigates the collective human condition.”

“The analytical framework of this comprehensive field study of what it means to be an American examines how a person’s personality, culture, technology, occupational and recreational activities affect a person’s sense of purposefulness and happiness. The text evaluates the nature of human existence, formation of human social relations, and methods of communication from various philosophic and cultural perspectives. The ultimate goal is to employ the author’s own mind and personal experiences as a filter to quantify what it means to live and die as a thinking and reflective person.”

“Personal essay writing that incites the mind and instigates personal growth involves examination and re-examination, a process of noticing and reflecting upon what a person perceives. Essayistic writing is an osmotic process wherein a person intuitively absorbs information and ideas, allows inchoate thoughts to gestate in the unconscious mind, and then consciously places the emergent strands of language and logic into an orderly and expressive format.”