THE LATE BOURGEOIS WORLD

Books read:

Sophie Hannah - Little face

Tana French - Broken Harbour

Nadine Gordimer - The late bourgeois world

Doris Lessing - Martha Quest

Then I re-read The secret history by Donna Tartt for the first time since 2010. It was just as good as I remembered it - maybe even better.

Quotes:

"I don't know whether Max loved me. He wanted to make love with me, of course. And he wanted to please me - no, he wanted my approval, my admiration for whatever he did. These pass as definitions of love; I can think of others that are neither more nor less acceptable. This business of living for each other that one hears about; it can just as well be living for the sight of one's self in the other's eyes. Something keeps two people together; that's as far as I'd go. 'Love' was the name I was given for it, but I don't know that it always fits my experience."

- The late bourgeois world, Nadine Gordimer

"The flast was bright, modern, compact. The small living room had striped curtains, pale rugs, light modern furniture. Coming into it was a relief; one enters a strange place feeling, To what must I adapt myself? But there was nothing individual here to claim one's mood, there was no need to submit oneself. In this country, or in England, or in any other country, one enters this flat, is at home at once, with a feeling of peace. Thank God! There are enough claims one us as it is, tugging us this way and that, without considering fittings and furniture; who used them before? What kind of people were they? What do they demand of us? Ah, the blessed anonymity of the modern flat, that home for nomads who, with no idea of where they are travelling, must travel light, ready for anything."

- Martha Quest, Doris Lessing 

I ♥ Doris Lessing.

Anita Brookner, by Karen Robinson

Been reading some books in Swedish, feel free to check them out here: http://librisvedese.blogspot.se/. Now I'm reading Little face by Sophie Hannah.

THE DUD AVOCADO

"I mean how can Life be so contrary to - never mind Art - just to general information and what's called Common Knowledge?"

"The vehemence of my moral indignation surprised me. Was I beginning to have standards and principles, and, oh dear, scruples?"

"I mean, the question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again night after night, but God knows the answer to that is, don't we all anyway; might as well get paid for it."

"It's amazing how right you can be about a person you don't know; it's only the people you do know who confuse you."

"A rowdy bunch on the whole, they were most of them so violently individualistic as to be practically interchangeable."

- The dud avocado, Elaine Dundy

That last sentence is so perfect I actually envy Elaine Dundy for having written it.