Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, r. Dec. 2019

p. 99 Anna read and understood, but it was unpleasant to read, that is to say, to follow the reflection of other people's lives. She was too eager to live herself.

p. 239 "You can't imagine what a pleasure this complete laziness is to me: not a thought in my brain - you might send a ball rolling through it!"

p. 241 Constantine Levin did not like talking or hearing about the beauty of nature. Words seemed to detract from the beauty of what he was looking at.

p. 261 Besides, painful as were for a mother the fear of illness, and sorrow at the appearance of evil tendencies in her children, those children were already beginning to repay her care by affording her small joys. These joys were so trifling as to be as imperceptible as grains of gold among the sand, and in moments of depression she saw nothing but the sand; yet there were brighter moments when she felt nothing but joy, saw nothing but the gold.

p. 271 "Why does she talk French with the children?" he thought. "How unnatural and false it is! And the children feel it. Teach them French and deprive them of sincerity," thought he, not knowing that Dolly had considered the point over and over again and had decided that even to the detriment of their sincerity the children had to be taught French.

p. 308 One change Vronsky noticed in him was that quiet and permanent radiance which comes upon the faces of people who have succeeded and feel assured that everybody recognizes their success. Vronsky knew that kind of radiance, and noticed it at once on Serpukhovskoy's face.

p. 312 He had often before been joyfully conscious of his body, but had never loved himself, his own body, as he did now. It gave him pleasure to feel the slight pain in his strong leg, to be conscious of the muscles of his chest moving as he breathed.

p. 348 "I am working, I want to do something, and I had forgotten that it will all end in Death!" He sat on his bed in the dark, doubled his arms around his knees and thought, scarcely breathing from the mental strain. But the more mental effort he made the clearer he saw that it was undoubtedly so: that he had really forgotten and overlooked one little circumstance in life - that Death would come and end everything, so that it was useless to begin anything, and there was no help for it. Yet, it was terrible, but true. "But I am still alive: what am I to do now? What am I to do?"

p. 394 "What is the use of arguing? No one ever convinces another." "Yes, you are quite right," said Levin, "for the most part, people argue so warmly only because they cannot make out what it is that their opponent wants to prove."

p. 395 He had experienced the fact that sometimes in the middle of a discussion one understands what it is that one's opponent likes, and suddenly likes it oneself, and immediately agrees with him, when all proofs become superfluous and unnecessary. Sometimes the reverse happens; one at last mentions the thing one likes, for the sake of which one has been devising arguments, and if this is said well and sincerely, one's opponent suddenly agrees and ceases to dispute. That was what he wanted to express.

p. 447 He thought she was prettier than ever: not that those flowers, the veil, or the dress ordered from Paris enhanced her beauty in any way, but because, despite all the carefully planned richness of her attire, the look on her sweet face and lips was still that look of innocent truthfulness.

p. 474 He could work neither when he was too indifferent nor when he was too highly roused and saw everything too distinctly. There was only one stage between calmness and inspiration, at which work was possible, and today he was too excited.

p. 484 "She takes no interest in our work, in the farm, in peasants, or in music, though she is quite good at that, or in books. She does nothing and is quite content." In his heart he blamed her, but he did not understand that she was preparing herself for a period of activity which was inevitably coming, when at one and the same time she would be her husband's wife, the mistress of the house, and a bearer, nurturer, and educator of her children. He did not understand that, but she knew it instinctively; and while getting ready for her gigantic task she did not reproach herself for the moments of careless and happy love that she now enjoyed while building her nest for the future.

p. 677 "You talk of moral training! You can't imagine how difficult that is! You have hardly mastered one fault when another crops up and there is a fresh struggle. One must have the support of religion - you remember our talk about that? ... No father relying on his own strength, without that support, could educate a child.

p. 731 Before any definite step can be taken in a household, there must be either complete division or loving accord between husband and wife. When their relations are indefinite it is impossible for them to make any move. Many families continue for years in their old ruts, hated by both husband and wife, merely because there is neither complete discord nor harmony. Both for Vronsky and for Anna life in Moscow... was intolerable.

p. 775 "I was so busy that I did not know when I could tear myself away. And you, as usual," said he, smiling, "are enjoying tranquil happiness outside the currents in your peaceful shallows."

p. 779 Since the moment when, at the sight of his beloved and dying brother, Levin for the first time looked at the questions of life and death in the light of the new convictions, as he called them, which between the ages of twenty and thirty-four had imperceptibly replaced the beliefs of his childhood and youth, he had been less horrified by death than by life without the least knowledge of whence it came, what it is for, why, and what it is. Organisms, their destruction, the indestructibility of matter, the law of the conservation of energy, development - the terms that had superseded these beliefs - were very useful for mental purposes; but they gave no guidance for life, and Levin suddenly felt like a person who has exchanged a thick fur coat for a muslin garment and who, being out in the frost for the first time, becomes clearly convinced, not by arguments, but with the whole of his being, that he is as good as naked and that he must inevitably perish miserably.

p. 789 "If goodness has a cause, it is no longer goodness; if it has a consequence - a reward, it is also not goodness. Therefore goodness is beyond the chain of cause and effect. It is exactly this I know and that we all know. What greater miracle could there be than that? Can I possibly have found the solution of everything? Have my sufferings really come to an end?"

Darker Than Night by Tom Henderson, r. Oct. 2019

p. 7 David wasn't an avid deer hunter, had never shot one, in fact. It wasn't one of the highlights of his year, as it is for many hunters. Most years he went, but it wasn't a religion for him. Truth of it was, sitting in a deer blind was more of a good, quiet way to get over his hangover from the night before than it was a place of stealth from which to kill deer. Brian wasn't much of a hunter, either, though he went every year, too, mostly to drink beer with the guys and play cards. His girlfriend, Janice Payne, would joke about him and David: "They seen a deer, they wouldn't shoot it, you know?" In fact, Brian wasn't a hunter at all. He might not admit it to the guys, but he told Janice he'd seen many a deer walking by over the years but had never even aimed at one, much less pulled a trigger. He just liked drinking with the guys at night and sitting out in the woods, at peace, during the day.

How to Write Short by Roy Peter Clark, r. Aug. 2019

p. 114 Building on a parallel structure, Chris Cooper writes, “Was big boy, now little man.”

p. 126 Remember Donald Murray’s advice, “Brevity comes from selection and not compression.” And mine: “First prune the big limbs, then shake out the dead leaves.”

p. 144 “Share attention is the first essential ingredient” of empathy, writes the psychologist Daniel Goleman. “As two people attend to what the other says and does, they generate a sense of mutual interest, a joint focus that amounts to perceptual glue.” As a writer, I want to create that glue, but before I can get you to stick to me as a reader, I must gain your attention. One way to keep your attention is to promise you something short and valuable. In effect, I tell the reader: This will not waste your time. It will have a power disproportionate to its modest length. You will be better off having read it.”

From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming, r. Jul. 2019

p. 95 The blubbery arms of the soft life had Bond round the neck and they were slowly strangling him. He was a man of war and when, for a long period, there was no war, his spirit went into a decline.

p. 246 There was no sound except the hollow iron clang as the great train tore through the Simplon Tunnel - through the heart of the Wasenhorn and Monte Leone. The toothglass tinkled. The woodwork creaked comfortably. For a hundred yards on both sides of the little death cell rows of people were sleeping, or lying awake, thinking of their lives and loves, making little plans, wondering who would meet them at the Gare de Lyon. And, all the while, just along the corridor, death was riding with them down some dark hole, behind the same great Diesel, on the same hot rails.

50 Great Short Stories, r. May 2019

p. 50 One had taken it for granted at the time, for anything that is supremely good produces more acceptance than surprise. (Brooksmith by Henry James)

p. 196 "It's one of the best riddles I've heard, though," I said, watching Charles, who was very gradually coming out of it. In response to this compliment, he sank considerably lower in his chair and again masked his face up to the eyes with a corner of the tablecloth. He then looked at me with his exposed eyes, which were full of slowly subsiding mirth and the pride of someone who knows a really good riddle or two." (For Esmé with Love and Splendor by J. D. Salinger)

p. 221 He had managed to accomplish all this without ever giving people the impression that he was particularly interested in the business; yet he had always followed everything done with a keen and remorseless attention that masked itself under an appearance of impassivity. (The Man Who Shot Sleeping Turtles by Edmund Wilson)

p. 248 What was happening? He turned the question over and over in his mind and could find no answer. Suppose the nightmare dreamed itself out to its horrible conclusion. Death was waiting for him. His eyes filled with tears; he wanted so passionately to live. "Just to be alive." Poor Emily had wished it too, he remembered: "Just to be alive." There were still so many places in this astonishing world unvisited, so many queer delightful people still unknown, so many lovely women never so much as seen. The huge white oxen would still be dragging their wains along the Tucsan roads, the cypresses would still go up, straight as pillars, to the blue heaven; but he would not be there to see them. And the sweet southern wines - Tears of Christ and Blood of Judas - others would drink them, not he. Others would walk down the obscure and narrow lanes between the bookshelves in the London Library, sniffing the dusty perfume of good literature, peering at strange titles, discovering unknown names, exploring the fringes of vast domains of knowledge. He would be lying in a hole in the ground. And why, why? Confusedly he felt that some extraordinary kind of justice was being done. In the past he had been wanton and imbecile and irresponsible. Now Fate was playing as wantonly, as irresponsibly, with him. It was tit for tat, and God existed after all. (The Giaconda Smile by Aldous Huxley)

p. 374 "One envies the soldiers at the end of the day, wiping the sweat and blood from their faces, counting the dead fallen to their hands, looking at the devastated fields, the torn earth that seems to suffer and bleed with them. One does, really. The final brutality of it - the taste of primitive passion - the ferocious frankness of the blow struck with one's hand - the direct call and the straight response. Well, the sea gave you nothing of that, and seemed to pretend that there was nothing the matter with the world." (The Tale by Joseph Conrad)

p. 379 "The master met him on the after-deck, looming up in the fog amongst the blurred shapes of the usual ship's fittings. He was a robust Northman, bearded, and in the force of his age." (The Tale by Joseph Conrad)

p. 397 His father's teeth - ninety dollars. The money it cost to keep a man going in his losing fight against age. (Main Currents of American Thought by Irwin Shaw)

An E.B. White Reader by E.B. White and edited by W.W. Watt and R.W. Bradford, r. Jan 2019

p. 23 Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy. As in the sexual experience, there are never more than two persons present in the act of reading – the writer, who is the impregnator, and the reader, who is the respondent. This gives the experience of reading a sublimity and power unequalled by any other form of communication.

p. 71 Trexler walked dizzily through the empty waiting room and the doctor followed along to let him out. It was late; the secretary had shut up shop and gone home. Another day over the dam.

p. 87 A writer goes about his task today with the extra satisfaction that comes from knowing that he will be the first to have his head lopped off – even before political dandies. In my own case this is a double satisfaction, for if freedom were denied me by force of earthly circumstance, I am the same as dead and would infinitely prefer to go into fascism without my head than with it, having no use for it any more and not wishing to be saddled with so heavy an encumbrance.

p. 99 [editor’s note] In the swirl of language that is modern life, no one can afford to forget that ignorant and evil people use abstractions with powerful connotation to obscure thinking rather than clarify meaning. Anyone can nod his head in agreement when a large abstraction like justice or extremism is dropped like an olive into an oratorical cocktail, while at the same moment never noticing that he is agreeing with his own meaning of the word, not the speaker’s.

p. 107 I know that quite frequently in the course of delivering himself of a poem a poet will find himself in possession of a lyric bauble – a line as smooth as velvet to the ear, as pretty as a feather to the eye, yet a line definitely out of plumb with the frame of the poem. What to do with a trinket like this is always troubling to a poet, who is naturally grateful to his Muse for small favors. Usually he just drops the shining object into the body of the poem somewhere and hopes it won’t look too giddy.

p. 159 The dinner date seemed a familiar conflict: I move in a desultory society and often a week or two will roll by without my going to anybody’s house to dinner or anyone’s coming to mine, but when an occasion does arise, and I am summoned, something usually turns up (an hour or two in advance) to make all human intercourse seem vastly inappropriate. I have come to believe that there is in hostesses a special power of divination, and that they deliberately arrange dinners to coincide with pig failure or some other sort of failure.

p. 166 I noticed that although [my dachshund Fred] weighed far less than the pig, he was harder to drag, being possessed of the vital spark.

p. 182 I discovered by test that fully ninety per cent of whatever was on my desk at any given moment were IN things. Only ten per cent were OUT things – almost too few to warrant a special container. This, in general, must be true of other people’s lives too. It is the reason lives get so cluttered up – so many things (except money) filtering in, so few things (except strength) draining out.

p. 185 I think the best writing is often done by persons who are snatching the time from something else – from an occupation, or from a profession, or from a jail term – something that is either burning them up, as religion, or love, or politics, or that is boring them to tears, as prison, or a brokerage house, or an advertising firm.

p. 187 Physically I am better fitted for writing than for farming, because farming takes great strength and endurance. Intellectually I am better fitted for farming than writing.

p. 223 Advice to young writers who want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don’t write about Man, write about a man.

p. 231 On the porch was a distorting mirror, to give the traveler a comical image of himself, who had miraculously learned to gaze in an ordinary glass without smiling.

p. 269 Living things are always harder to lift, somehow, than inanimate objects, and I think any mover would rather walk up three flights with a heavy bureau than go into a waltz with a rubber plant. There is really no way for a man to put his arms around a big house plant and still remain a gentleman.

p. 289 Up to the farmhouse to dinner through the teeming, dusty field, the road under our sneakers was only a two-track road. The middle track was missing, the one with the marks of the hooves and splotches of dried, flaky manure. There had always been three tracks to choose from in choosing which track to walk in; now the choice was narrowed down to two. For a moment I missed terribly the middle alternative.

p. 297 It has been ambitious and plucky of me to attempt to describe what is indescribable, and I have failed, as I knew I would. But I have discharged my duty to my society; and besides, a writer, like an acrobat, must occasionally try a stunt that is too much for him.

The Simple Path to Wealth by J. L. Collins, r. Jan. 2019

p. viii  Creating this book has been a long and sometimes stressful process. The emotional rollercoaster had me at times depressed, at times foaming-at-the-mouth raving and at times giddy with delight. My wife, Jane, endured it all without stabbing me in my sleep. That there is not an award for this is one of the great shortcomings of our civilization.

p. 12 So now I'm (again) retired and it feels great. I love not having to keep regular hours. I can stay up till 4 am and sleep till noon. Or I can get up at 4:30 and watch the sun rise. I can ride my motorbike any time the weather or my pals beckon. I can hang around New Hampshire or disappear for months at a time to South America. I post on my blog when the spirit moves me and I might even get another book or two written. Or I can just sit on the porch with a cup of coffee and read the books others have written.

p. 12 One of my few regrets is that I spent far too much time worrying about how things might work out. It's a huge waste, but it is a bit hardwired into me. Don't do it.

p. 162 The bottom line is that anyone using a high-deductible insurance plan should fund an HSA. The benefits are simply too good to ignore.

p. 241 Finally, while giving is a fine and pleasant thing, no one has an obligation to do so. Anyone who tells you differently is trying to sell you something - most likely the idea of giving to them and / or their pet projects.

p. 241 As individuals we only have one obligation to society: To ensure we, and our children, are not a burden to others. The rest is our personal choice. Make your own and make the world a far more interesting place.