Dreaming of teacups, in yesteryear

Some quotes that I like:

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." -- Catcher in the Rye.

I never reread anything, but I have the strangest desire to reread Catcher in the Rye. When I read it, around age 13 in my summer before high school, I thought Holden was such a neurotic dick. Even though he did remind me of myself and some of my friends, he wasn't a character I particularly wanted to read about.

I think I would feel differently about it now. It also makes me want to reread Franny and Zoey, which I don't think I ever finished? I did love the pretentiousness of it all, though.

Another quote:

"If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time. " -- A Remembrance of Things Past, Volume II.

I forgot how much I adore Marcel Proust. He's also on my list of rereads.

I'll add a few more. Scan if you can; read if you might.

"But, when nothing subsists from a distant past, after the death of others, after the destruction of objects, only the senses of smell and taste, weaker but more enduring, more intangible, more persistent, more faithful, continue for a long time, like souls, to remember, to wait, to hope, on the ruins of all the rest, to bring without flinching, on their nearly impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory."

"Society people are often myopic; at the moment when the cease all relations with Jewish ladies of their acquaintance, as they wonder how to fill the void, they notice, pushed among them as if by a stormy night, a new lady, who is also Jewish; but thanks to her newness, she is not associated in their minds, as were the earlier ladies, with what they believe they must detest. she does not demand that they respect her God. She is adopted. It was not a question of antisemitism when I first started to go to Odette’s."

"There is probably not one person, however great his virtue, who cannot be led by the complexities of life’s circumstances to a familiarity with the vices he condemns the most vehemently—without his completely recognizing this vice which, disguised as certain events, touches him and wounds him: strange words, an inexplicable attitude, on a given night, of the person whom he otherwise has so many reasons to love."

"Let us leave pretty women to men devoid of imagination."

All from A Remembrance of Things Past. Other quotes may be found here.

And he's Queer? Amazing. Proust has this amazing way of taking everything that I like about Old world writing and doing it so incredibly well. He makes me want to be a novelist.

In other news, I've been feeling this change come on for a while-- I was talking to Irene about it earlier. That I'm slowing down, getting a little less excited? I keep seeing myself in tea shops, wearing sweaters, screaming less and adventuring even less so.

In other words, I am feeling heartbroken in a number of ways, melancholy, and literary. The last one is a good thing-- I always think I'm a better writer when I'm a little sad.

Still reading 1984. And I really need to start studying for finals.

Wish me luck.