Thenextpage

#MyBrilliantFriend
#ElenaFerrante

She sat on the edge of the bed in
underpants and bra. Next to her was the wedding dress, which looked like the body of a dead woman….
"What's going to happen to me, Lenù?"
#TheWriteWomen

#Dhalgren
#SamuelRDelany

“Arthur goes out there, every day…Then he comes home…Do you know, I don't believe all that out there is real. Once the smoke covers him, I don't believe he goes anywhere. I don't believe there's anyplace to go…I don't think I believe there ever was.”

#TheSummerBook
#ToveJansson

“But we were right here all the time!"
Sophia shouted. "Why didn't he say we were here?"
"To spare us."
"Why? Why do we have to be spared whenever something happens? That's not the truth. We didn't have to be spared..."
#TheWriteWomen

#MobyDick
#HermanMelville

Round the world…whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through numberless perils to the very point whence we started…Were this world an endless plain…in pursuit…they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.
#MelvilleMonday 🐳

Black and yellow print of author and book title.

Poguemahone
by Patrick McCabe

#TheEnchantedApril
#ElizabethvonArnim

“To Those who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine. Small mediaeval Italian Castle on the shores of the Mediterranean to be Let Furnished for the month of April. Necessary servants remain. Z, Box 1000, The Times."
#TheWriteWomen

#AgainsttheDay
#ThomasPynchon

“This world you take to be 'the' world will die, and descend into Hell…Flanders will be the mass grave of History…you children drift in a dream …imagine the fabric of Time torn open, and yourselves swept through, with no way back, orphans and exiles…”

Loved this one.

#TheBloodyChamber
#AngelaCarter

...the armfuls of arum lilies that filled my bedroom in great glass jars…lilies with the heavy pollen that powders your fingers as if you had dipped them in turmeric. The lilies I always associate with him; that are white.
And stain you.
#TheWriteWomen

KUBLAI: Perhaps this dialogue of ours is taking place between two beggars…
POLO: Perhaps all that is left of the world is a wasteland…and the hanging garden of the Great Khan's palace. It is our eyelids that separate them, but we cannot know which is inside and which outside.

#InvisibleCities
#ItaloCalvino

KUBLAI: …visit all the countries…you have never moved from this garden…
POLO: Everything I see and do assumes meaning in a mental space…
KUBLAI: I, too, am not sure I am here…
POLO: Perhaps this garden exists only in the shadow of our lowered eyelids…

#SleeplessNights
#ElizabethHardwick
I have always, all my life, been looking for help from a man. It has come many times and many more it has not. This began early...The predator's first gift...was to reveal…to us the tangled nature of bribery. This...was a lasting lesson.
#TheWriteWomen

#Poguemahone
#PatrickMcCabe

She says,
without so much as a
by-your-leave…
when - whee! - you hear
this rocket
it's a V-1
& then you hear nothing
until down it comes
& another wall
or gable-end tumbles
gone, as so many memories
before
reduced to rubble forever.

António Lobo Antunes, One of Europe’s Most Revered Writers, Dies at 83

#AntónioLoboAntunes
António Lobo Antunes, One of Europe’s Most Revered Writers, Dies at 83 www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/b...

#AntónioLoboAntunes
António Lobo Antunes
Sep 1, 1942 to Mar 5, 2026

www.euronews.com/culture/2026...

The great Portuguese writer António Lobo Antunes GCSE has passed away at the age of 83.

Antunes died in Lisbon, the city where he was born, the site of his psychiatric practice, and the setting for many of his 30+ works.

Portugal has declared a national day of mourning.

#DaddysGoneAhunting
#PenelopeMortimer

The women have no such understanding...little icebergs, each keeps a bright and shiny face above the water; below the water…each keeps her own isolated personality...Combined, their energy could start a revolution...drive an atomic plant.
#TheWriteWomen

We'll have a tyranny of conformist nonconformity presided over by a symbolic outsider whose very election depended on our deep conviction that his persona is utter bullshit. A rule of image….

Finished #ThePaleKing
#DavidFosterWallace

the Reduce Government candidate …a symbolic Rebel…whose election was underwritten by…soulless profit-machines whose takeover of American civic and spiritual life will convince Americans that rebellion against…corporate life will consist in buying products….

Finished #Pnin
#VladimirNabokov

a heated exchange between Prof Bolotov,who taught the History of Philosophy,and Prof Chateau,who taught the Philosophy of History: "Reality is Duration," one voice,Bolotov's,would boom. "It is not!" the other would cry. "A soap bubble is as real as a fossil tooth!"

#Milkman
#AnnaBurns

"The truth was dawning on me of how terrifying it was not to be numb, but to be aware, to have facts, retain facts, be present, be adult."
#TheWriteWomen

#Headshot
#RitaBullwinkel

"Girls are born with all of the eggs they will ever make. Tiny future fighters are nested inside the infant bodies of baby girls.... girls are infinite backwards and forwards."
#TheWriteWomen

#Moderan
#DavidRBunch

But we were MEN!…When our beautiful plans for war went alive in the world…the White Witch rockets firing,the wow bombs grandly falling…and all the other hardware of our Joy-at-War beautifully functioning—we knew what we were doing. We lived, we felt….

I feel the same way. DeLillo can lie to me and I will read it and enjoy it thoroughly.

Libra
by Don DeLillo

#TombofSand
#GeetanialiShree

What the heck are you on about? You know perfectly well this has been a headache for both countries, that neither has been able to figure out to this day who has the right to live where, who belongs where….
#TheWriteWomen

#MobyDick
#HermanMelville

…after repeated, intrepid assaults, the White Whale had escaped alive; it cannot be much matter of surprise that some whalemen should go still further in their superstitions; declaring Moby Dick not only ubiquitous, but immortal…
#MelvilleMonday 🐳

#DucksNewburyport
#LucyEllmann

…the fact that Ethan got me to promise him long ago that if I was ever really desperate,like suicidal or something,that I would tell him,which still really comforts me…the fact that everybody should have that promise from somebody,a guaranteed listener…
#TheWriteWomen

#InvisibleCities
#ItaloCalvino

“So then, yours is truly a journey through memory!" The Great Khan…sat up in his hammock every time he caught the hint of a sigh in Marco's speech… “You return from your voyages with a cargo of regrets…confess what you are smuggling: moods, states of grace, elegies!"

#Libra
#DonDeLillo

Create coincidence so bizarre they have to believe it…Desperate men give their solitude a purpose…If the world is where we hide from ourselves, what do we do when the world is no longer accessible? We invent a false name, invent a destiny, purchase a firearm through the mail.