The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.
From What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir by Haruki Murakami
I can definitely taste the human in this.
Finn
Little Jimmy fell down and benastied himself to beat the devil.
our Southern Highlanders by Horace Kephart
From Our Southern Highlanders by Horace Kephart
I’m jes’ broguin’ about.
Yes, I’m jest cooterin’ around.
I’m santerin’ about.
Oh, I’m jes’ prodjectin’ around.
Jist traffickin’ about.
No, I ain’t workin’ none - jest spuddin’ around.
Me? I’m jes’ shacklin’ around.
Yea, la! I’m jist loaferin’ about.
- to “brogue” means to go about in brogues
- a “cooter” is a box-tortoise, and the noun is turned into a verb with an ease characteristic of the mountaineers
- “spuddin around” means toddling or jolting along
- to “shummick” (also “shammick) is to shuffle about, idly nosing into things, as a bear does when there is nothing serious in view
- “shacklin’ around” pictures a shackly, loose-jointed way of walking, expressive of the idle vagabond
I finally have everything I’ve ever wanted: a kitten, a tarantula and an awesome fort.
Fallie
If this is a dream, I don’t want to ever wake up.
Fallie, talking about our new kitten.
the survival game, or I'm glad my kids watch Dr. Who
- Fallie's best friend: And then all of us will go to heaven!
- Fallie: Or... let's pretend the universe will collapse in on itself!
Tonight I found out that a lot of people on trains like kids who are giggly.
Finn told me this after riding Marta to the airport with her Grandpa to pick up her Granny. I wonder what she and Fallie were doing on the train…
something Fallie said a long time ago
What if you had an infinite amount of gold? You could own the entire world! You could tell someone, “Go get me a piece of fried chicken.” “No, I ain’t gonna get you a piece of fried chicken!” “Then I’ll kill you!” That person is evil. And everyone else would fly away to the moon.
Shinn had stood at the curb drinking his first Coke of his first day at the Post and felt his clothes unwrinkle and sag slightly in the humidity, smelling the same honeysuckle and cut grass as suburban Chicago, listening to the songs of dawn-stirred birds in the locust trees along Self-Storage, and his thoughts had drifted all over the place, and suddenly it occurred that the birds, whose twitters and repeated songs sounded so pretty and affirming of nature and the coming day, might actually, in a code known only to other birds, be the birds each saying ‘Get away’ or ‘This branch is mine!’ or ‘This tree is mine! I’ll kill you! Kill, kill!’ Or any manner of dark, brutal, or self-protective stuff - they might be listening to war cries.
The Pale King by David Foster Wallace
Grandfather always said school’s a place where they take sixteen years to wear down your brain.
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
Fallie found a salamander at her grandparents’ house.
One night, Smoky, hearing noises in the wilderness of the kitchen-garden, went out and surprised with his flashlight a starveling, an animal long, gray, red-eyed and slavering, mad with cold and hunger. A stray dog, the others said, or something; but only Smoky had seen it, and Smoky wondered.
from Little, Big by John Crowley
Her evil schemes found expression in cooking. She was a really excellent cook, for she had the primary gifts in the culinary art: diligence and imagination; but when she put her hand to it, no one ever knew what surprise might appear at table. Once she made some pate toast, really exquisite, of rats’ livers; this she never told us until we had eaten them and pronounced them good; and some grasshoppers’ claws, crisp and sectioned, laid on an open tart in a mosaic; and pigs’ tails baked as if they were little cakes; and once she cooked a complete porcupine with all its quills - who knows why, probably just to give us all a shock at the raising of the dish cover, for even she, who usually ate everything, however odd, that she had prepared herself, refused to taste it, though it was a baby porcupine, rosy and certainly tender.
one of my favorite parts from The Baron in the Trees by Italio Calvino
Yes, I read children’s books sometimes. The above paragraph reminded me of this and I like both very much.
← Earlier Posts
Page 1 of 2
