from "flirting with forty" by Jane Porter:
"his palm covers my cheek, and his thumb strokes across my mouth. Little bits of fire and flame burst within me.Wow!
And then he kisses me—or I him? It doesn't matter, only that I want him, want this kiss. Because I remember the last kiss, and the last kiss made everything young again, and beautiful, so beautiful, made my skin soft and my heart strong, my knees weak and my stomach a mass of butterflies ascending. I want this, and his lips cover mine, and there go the butterflies, all Amazon blues and greens, and I might as well be standing in the middle of the Brazilian rain forest as rain and sun compete and the earth is warmth and life is humid. Fragrant. Complete."
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I find the following description of the difficult process of discovering the truth incredibly accurate, profound, and revealing
from "CHANEL: Her life, her world—and the woman behind the legend she herself created" by Edmonde Charles-Roux:
CONCERNING TRUTH---------------------------------------------
GLIMPSED AMONG THE CORNFIELDS
OF CONVERSATION
The truth is difficult, sometimes maddening. Nothing is ever where you go to look for it. People who are said to know and universally regarded as knowing, yield, in the moment when their memories serve them at last, nothing but anecdotes for which one has no use. The enigma is left as entire as before, and the thing sought continues to refuse to be found. The truth is seldom a fleck of foam on the surface of a conversation; more often it is a black hole into which one is pitched as at the back of a cave—scratchings are there to which, at first glance, one attaches hardly more significance than to a slip of the pen, some accident of writing or recital, some parenthesis which an often tedious interlocutress opens after one has already ceased to listen.
Sometimes one puts all one’s hopes in the work of historians, analysts, and chroniclers; one pores over, sorts, and classifies, takes apart invisible gears and for one mad instant expects to see rising from the dust of ancient files the thing that is slipping through one’s fingers. And indeed, very rich in truth are certain archives, which become heartrendingly barren once one is convinced that they will not yield the thing one hoped to find in them. And how true it is that “rich” does not mean the same for everyone, and what a good thing that some can shout, “What treasures!” while others think, “How insignificant!”
There was a thought of the main female character that I found especially appropriate to life
from "The Bridges of Madison County”
"She was worried, but something in her had taken hold, something to do with risk. Whatever the cost, she was going out to Cedar Bridge."---------------------------------------------
The following excerpt from the last chapter of the book is, I think, a fantastic statement about or metaphor for our wishes for and goals in life.
from "Death in the Afternoon” by Ernest Hemingway
"If I could have made this enough of a book it would have had everything in it. ... We’ve seen it all go and we’ll watch it go again. The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before; and not too damned much after. Let those who want to save the world if you can get to see it clear and as a whole. Then any part you make will represent the whole if it’s made truly. The thing to do is work and learn to make it. No. It is not enough of a book, but still there were a few things to be said. There were a few practical things to be said."---------------------------------------------
Some good advice ... the grass isn’t always greener.
from "The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway
"Listen, Robert, going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that."
But you’ve never been to South America.
South America hell! If you went there the way you feel now it would be exactly the same. This is a good town. Why don’t you start living your life in Paris?"
