Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

by Gabrielle Zevin.

After the great first few sentences, I honestly expected more from this book. I liked how it was split into three parts (I was, I am, I will). But there is not much in there besides this. The ‘why’ behind many parts of the story is unclear, in fact ‘luck’ has more to do with it than I would have liked. The novel is an artificial and didactic (which I hate) story about putting ones past behind and becoming a better person. It also contains a bunch of references to movies and music, which perhaps I’d look up if I liked the story more.

Some quotes:

• […] listen for the pauses when you want to know if someone’s hiding something.
  2/44:45
• I was worried that you had gotten a bit, well, cynical […]. I wanted to remind you about romance. It was probably a stupid notion — a sixteen-year-old who’s not an expert on romance ought to be brought to a lab and dissected.
  3/16:45
• Ask two people to tell you anything, you’ll get two versions.
  3/17:55
• Screw the past.
  4/14:00
• I think it’s in somewhat bad taste to give an amnesiac a blank book.
  4/23:40
• It’s when you don’t need something that you tend to lose it.
  5/43:15
• But the good thing about art is that no one necessarily knows what you mean by it anyway.
  6/11:10
• They should tell you when you’re born: have a suitcase heart, be ready to travel.
  6/52:15

The Quiet American

by Graham Greene… A book which views life from behind very dark glasses.

Just Listen

Don’t think, or judge, just listen.

I’m still not sure what to make of Sarah Dessen’s latest book. I definitely enjoyed the unlikely combination of music, modeling, radio, personal secrets and… bacon! that the novel presents. The story was pretty amazing as well, with the exception of the ending, which I feel had too many good things concentrated. And I can relate to the wanting-to-quit-but-not-doing-it-as-it-would-disappoint-others state of mind. But like so many other times, I feel that here is an important lesson for me and I’m not getting it.

Quotes from “The Moon and Sixpence”

by William Somerset Maugham.

• Only the poet or the saint can water an asphalt pavement in the confident anticipation that lilies will reward his labour.
• Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination.
• I don’t think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
• Love is absorbing; it takes the lover out of himself; the most clear-sighted, though he may know, cannot realise that his love will cease; it gives body to what he knows is illusion, and, knowing it is nothing else, he loves it better than reality.
• There is no cruelty greater than a woman’s to a man who loves her and whom she does not love […]
• What a cruel practical joke old Nature played when she flung so many contradictory elements together, and left the man face to face with the perplexing callousness of the universe.
• The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither. We must be very humble. We must see the beauty of quietness. We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us. And let us seek the love of simple, ignorant people. Their ignorance is better than all our knowledge. Let us be silent, content in our little corner, meek and gentle like them. That is the wisdom of life.
• A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her, […] but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.
• Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain. We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them.
• […] the chains she forged only aroused his instinct of destruction, as the plate-glass window makes your fingers itch for half a brick […]
• As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.
• Strickland was an odious man, but I still think he was a great one.

Notă: am citit cartea în Română şi am fost surprins să găsesc câteva cuvinte ale căror sens îl ştiam din Engleză (ar trebui să fie invers): deconcertat, sordid, vendetă, sardonic, a disua. O altă curiozitate este faptul că numele personajului Tough Bill a fost tradus ca Bill Ghioagă :roll: