“... still the only ones where both ideas and style presented that high, gamey condition, those tainted patches, that bruised skin and overripe flavour which he so much relished in the decadent writers, whether Latin or monastic, of olden times.” #huysmans
... when his friends and critics were in tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased, he was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whose moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture.” (thomas hardy, far from the madding crowd)
When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun.
... he went to church, but yawned privately by the time the congregation reached the Nicene creed, and thought of what there would be for dinner when he meant to be listening to the sermon.
Alice Munro’s partner sexually abused her daughter. Rachel Aviv writes about how the open secret tore the family apart—and how Munro turned her child’s abuse into fiction. https://t.co/Rzq3X3Y51u
@pourfairelevide this is the only person in the world who, when confronted with the idea that literature may make us more empathic, immediately thinks “yes, especially sade.”