There was a pot of boiling rage on a private stove behind their closed curtains:.
Unlike Laura, I have never had the courage of my convictions.
I never do such things, however. I only consider them. If I did them, they would be sure I had gone mad again. Gone mad is what they say, and sometimes Run mad, as if mad is a direction, like west; as if mad is a different house you could step into, or a separate country entirely. But when you go mad you don’t go any other place, you stay where you are. And somebody else comes in.
I didn’t like it when other people criticized Laura – her vagueness, her simplicity, her feckleness. Criticism of Laura was reserved for me.
So true,” said Miss Violence, with a sigh. But she sighed about everything. She fit into Avilion very well – into its obsolete Victorian splendours, its air of aesthetic decay, of departed grace, of wan regret. Her attitudes and even her faded cashmeres went with the wallpaper. Laura.
We must all make sacrifices in order to help other people,” she said in a soothing tone. “Men must make sacrifices in war, and women must make sacrifices in other ways. That is how things are divided.
Hacer caso omiso no es lo mismo que ignorar, hay que esforzarse para ello.
Though it’s hard to concentrate on the idea of a future. She’s too immersed in the present:.
Melanie told me that all the early pictures of me had been burnt up in a fire. Only an idiot would have believed this, so I did.
God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform, as Reenie used to say. Could it be that Myra is my designated guardian angel? Or is she instead a foretaste of Purgatory? And how do you tell the difference?
Jack quit his advertising job and devoted himself to the life of the pen. Or rather, to the life of the Remington, soon to be replaced with an IBM Selectric, with the bouncing ball that let you change the typeface. Now that was cool!
Lambhood and tigerishness may be found in either gender, and in the same individual at different times.
Don’t go yet,” he said, but it was never any use saying don’t go yet to her. When she’d decided a thing, she was on her way.
The question at this age is what kind of dog you will shortly resemble. She will be a beagle, Prue a terrier. Pamela will be an Afghan, or something equally unearthly.
Gavin has tried quoting Yeats to the effect that women must labour to be beautiful, but Reynolds – who used to be a passionate Yeats fan – is now of the opinion that Yeats is entitled to his point of view, but that was then and social attitudes were different then, and in actual fact Yeats is dead.
You’ll learn about all of that when you’re old enough,” Aunt Vidala would say. All of that: the Handmaids were part of all of that. Something bad, then; something damaging, or something damaged, which might be the same thing.
I don’t want to be left by myself in this room. The walls are too empty, there are no pictures on them nor curtains on the little high-up window, nothing to look at and so you look at the wall, and after you do that for a time, there are pictures on it after all, and red flowers growing.
Some of the best things are done by those with nowhere to turn, by those who don’t have time, by those who truly understand the word helpless. They dispense with the calculation of risk and profit, they take no thought for the future, they’re forced at spearpoint into the present tense. Thrown over a precipice, you fall or else you fly; you clutch at any hope, however unlikely; however – if I may use such an overworked word – miraculous. What we mean by that is, Against all odds.
Rome versus the Visigoths, Ancient Egypt versus the Hyksos, Aztecs versus the Spaniards.
Petchenegs versus Byzantium,” said Jimmy, one memorable day.