I BELIEVE IN INSTINCT, ON PRINCIPLE

I just finished reading The Millstone; such a short book but it feels like it took me ages to finish it, mostly because I've been pretty sick these last couple of days. Anyway, I thought it was really good. The protagonist of the story, Rosamund Stacey, was a lot like me; she went on about things the same way I do, her thoughts are in my head too etc. It's nice, that, when a book reminds you of yourself. I'll put up some excerpts/quotes that I liked (the first one, and actually all of them, being things I've probably said to people when talking about myself, though in a less poetic and clear way. Anyway, you really should take the time to read these quotes, because they are quite lovely):

"I suddenly thought that perhaps I could take it and survive. I had thought this before when drunk but never when sober; up till that moment I had been inwardly convinced that too much worry would rot my nature beyond any hope of fruit or even of flower. But then, however fleetingly, I felt that I could take what I had been given to take. (...) I knew something now of the quality of life, and anything in the way of happiness that I should hereafter recieve would be based on fact and not on hope."

"I thought how unnerving it is, suddenly to see oneself for a moment as others see one, like a glimpse of unexpected profile in an umfamiliar combination of mirrors. I think I know myself better that anyone can know me, and I think this even in cold blood, for too much knowing is my vice; and yet one cannot account for the angles of others."

"I really cannot look back upon that week. I had thought myself unhappy as a child, obsessed by unreal terrors, guilts and alarms, and as an adolescent, obsessed by myself, and as a woman, obsessed by the fear that my whole life and career were to be thrown into endless gloom by an evening's affection. But now for the first time I felt dread on another's behalf, and I found it insupportable. From time to time (...) I thought I would drop dead from the strain on my spirits."

"I had never, however, managed to get over the fact that we had once known and loved each other so thoroughly (...) I would suddenly be assailed by sharp memories of his lips and teeth and naked flesh. They were not memories of desire, for I no longer desired him; rather they were shocking, anti-social disruptive memories, something akin to those impulses to strip oneself in crowded Tube trains, to throw oneself from theatre balconies. Images of fear, not desire. Other people do not feel this way about old lovers, I know. It must just be another instance of my total maladjustment with regard to sex."

"Silence feel between us; I drank another mouthful of whisky and wondered what to do. There seemed to be some deadlock between us that could never be broken, for neither of us was given to breaking such things, so we might well sit there, forever enstranged, forever connected. I would not have minded if it could have been there that we could have stayed, but I knew that a connexion so tenuous could not last, could not remain frozen and entranced forever, but must melt if so left, from the mere mortal warmth of continuing life. If one of us did not move towards the other, then we could only move apart."

""I can't help worrying", I said. "It's my nature. There's nothing I can do about my nature, is there?"
"No,", said George, his hand upon the door. "No, nothing.""

I'll probably go for Blonde now, or perhaps Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (well, obviously).