What Shall I Read Today? Part 8

Today I chose two books very close to each other, especially because of the relationship between their authors. The first one is Women (1978) by Charles Bukowski, and the second one is Ask the Dust (1939) John Fante's masterpiece. I read the first one last summer, and I have just finished the second. Even though one year separates these readings, I was so delighted, and inspired by the style, the words, the burning passion of the story, and that one city from which they all want to escape, but without which they can't survive: Los Angeles. 
The other connection between the two authors is that John Fante (who died in 1983) was one of America's forgotten writers, and Bukowski was the one who re-discovered his work. In a paragraph contained in Women there's a clear reference to Fante's Ask the Dust in which B. says, (I'm rephrasing): When I started reading that book I felt a miracle, big and unattended, had happened. 
Arturo Bandini was to John Fante what Henry Chinaski was to Charles Bukowski. Their alter-egos, their extreme selves.
In my opinion, both books are beautiful, nostalgic, and harsh "road-trips", there's a lot of wandering, but, instead of exploring the whole country, these characters always return to LA, they can't escape  the dust.
Moreover, both men are tragic, and cruel, and funny, and, in the end, they're just dreamers who live for writing and for a one-night-stand affair. Ask the Dust's prologue is just splendid (remember to read it at the end of the book), it shows the great capacity of a writer who is confident about his character because he is the character himself and about the story because it's his story.
Both wanderers walk on their inventors' steps, and the endings,one more poetic the other more brutal, are, in a word, just authentic. 

Favourite Quotes:

Women, Charles Bukowski

“That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”

“being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.”

“Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.”

“People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love.”

“I was sentimental about many things: a woman’s shoes under the bed; one hairpin left behind on the dresser; the way they said, “I’m going to pee..”’ hair ribbons; walking down the boulevard with them at 1:30 in the afternoon, just two people walking together; the long nights of drinking and smoking; talking; the arguments; thinking of suicide; eating together and feeling good; the jokes; the laughter out of nowhere; feeling miracles in the air; being in a parked car together; comparing past loves at 3am; being told you snore; hearing her snore; mothers, daughters, sons, cats, dogs; sometimes death and sometimes divorce; but always carring on, always seeing it through; reading a newspaper alone in a sandwich joint and feeling nausea because she’s now married to a dentist with an I.Q. of 95; racetracks, parks, park picnics; even jails; her dull friends; your dull friends; your drinking, her dancing; your flirting, her flirting; her pills, your fucking on the side and her doing the same; sleeping together”

“And yet women-good women--frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep.”

“Oh, I don’t mean you’re handsome, not the way people think of handsome. Your face seems kind. But your eyes - they’re beautiful. They’re wild, crazy, like some animal peering out of a forest on fire.”

“There's no way I can stop writing, it's a form of insanity.”

Ask The Dust, John Fante

“You are nobody, and I might have been somebody, and the road to each of us is love.”

“Almighty God, I am sorry I am now an atheist, but have You read Nietzsche?”

“Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town!”

“I felt his hot tears and the loneliness of man and the sweetness of all men and the aching haunting beauty of the living”

“Arturo Bandini: -What does happiness mean to you Camilla?
Camilla: -That you can fall in love with whoever you want to,
and not feel ashamed of it.”

“Ah, Evelyn and Vivian, I love you both, I love you for your sad lives, the empty misery of your coming home at dawn. You too are alone, but you are not like Arturo Bandini, who is neither fish, fowl nor good red herring. So have your champagne, because I love you both, and you too, Vivian, even if your mouth looks like it had been dug out with raw fingernails and your old child's eyes swim in blood written like mad sonnets.”

My Summer Books' Wishlist

Since my birthday is approaching, and summer is my busiest reading time, I have been writing titles in the last few months, and now the time has come to make a proper list to remember my next purchases.

Versions of Hollywood Crime Cinema: Studies in Ford, Wilder, Coppola, Scorsese, and Others. Carl Freedman. It will be published on the 12th June.

Price: £ 15.63

 

World Film Locations: London. Neil Mitchell.

   Price: £ 8.95

Stephen King on the Big Screen. Mark Browning.

Price: £ 16.50

Stanley Kubrick at Look Magazine: Authorship and Genre in Photojournalism and Film. Philippe Mather.

Price: £ 14.20

 

Polanski & Perception. Davide Caputo.

Price: £ 13.13

The Autobiography and Sex Life of Andy Warhol. John Wilcock.

Price: £ 26.51

Role Models. John Waters.

Price: depending on the sellers.

 

Alfred Hitchcok and the Making of Pyscho. Stephen Rebello.

Price: £ 6.64

 

The Saga of the Century: The Fountain Overflows, This Real Night, and Cousin Rosamund. 

Rebecca West.

Price: £ 16.47

Belli e Perdenti. Antieroi e post-eroi nella narrativa contemporanea di lingua inglese. 

Silvia Albertazzi.

Price: £ 18.12

Screenwriter's Bible: A Complete Guide to Writing, Formatting & Selling Your Script. David Trottier.

Price: £ 15.19

 


                           
                           

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. 

Stephen King.

Price: £ 5.99

Life. Keith Richards.

Price: £ 5.66

What shall I read today? Part 7

Choke, Chuck Palahniuk (2001)

As a Palahniuk's novel, and one of unique genius, I would add, the world presented to us is a surreal one.
However, since I would define Palahniuk an "anthropologist", first of all and, secondly, a writer, the material for this surprising novel comes from his researches in reality. Through his attendancy to sexual addiction groups, or talks with total strangers, Palahniuk built the story of Victor Mancini and his friend Denny. The writer's focus and study on the individual and its pysche reaches outstanding levels in this book. Unforgettable are the scenes set in the characters' working place: a re-enactment museum set in colonial times, plus the author's ability to combine the numerous sub-plots, and make them collide in an exciting, breath-taking climax.

Favourite quotes:

“What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.”

"People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That's the only lasting thing you can create.”

“We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.”

“I feel my heart ache, but I've forgotten what that feeling means.”

“It's pathetic how we can't live with the things we can't understand. How we need everything labeled and explained and deconstructed.”

“We've spent so much time judging what other people created that we've created very, very little of our own.”

“The girl's lover was gone, but his shadow was still there.”

“I used rebellion as a way to hide out. We use criticism as a fake participation.”


The elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery (2006) 

There is nothing better in books than characters who share your same love for literature, especially if it's Lev Tolstoj. We follow the two main characters, Paloma and Renée, whose lives will meet thanks to the presence of Kakuro Ozu, a Japanese business man, fascinated by Renée's hidden intelligence and culture. One of this book's best qualities is the choice of its setting: an upper-class Parisian block of flats, in which Renée works as a concierge, and Paloma lives with her family's hypocrisy. Exquisitely, and thoughtfully written, a tale about life, culture, and beauty. Without forgetting hilarious scenes of subtle social criticism set in the building's hall. The book, as its title, has the "same simple refinement as the hedgehog."

Favourite quotes:

“I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language. ”

“People aim for the stars, and they end up like goldfish in a bowl. I wonder if it wouldn't be simpler just to teach children right from the start that life is absurd.”

“When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment?”

“Personally I think that grammar is a way to attain beauty.”

“I find this a fascinating phenomenon: the ability we have to manipulate ourselves so that the foundation of our beliefs is never shaken.”

“Do you know that it is in your company that I have had my finest thoughts?”

“Life has meaning and we grown-ups know what it is is the universal lie that everyone is supposed to believe. Once you become an adult and you realize that's not true, it's too late.”

“When someone that you love dies..it's like fireworks suddenly burning out in the sky and everything going black.”

“Beautiful things should belong to beautiful souls."

“They didn't recognize me," I repeat.
He stops in turn, my hand still on his arm.
"It is because they have never seen you," he says. "I would recognize you anywhere.”

“In the end, I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song.”

What shall I read today? Part 6

My Dark Places: An L.A. Memoir, James Ellroy (1996)

This book represents a writer's, and a man's braveness in telling about his "dark places" publicly. James Ellroy's masterpiece is a personal trip inside his own life, starting with the trauma and obsession for the "Black Dahlia" which will accompany him throughout his whole life. 

Ellroy's mother, Jean Ellroy, was killed in El Monte in 1958 when he was 10, and her death still remains one of the unsolved homicides in the United States. From then we follow the mind of a child, a teenager, a young man, who by going through the harsh hell of life develops an extreme hunger for books, knowledge, investigation, and the rest is history.  

The history of one of the most celebrated crime writers of the 20th century. Only a few quotations this time, because I think, the 'poem' dedicated to his mother at the beginning of the book is already enough to understand the richness of it.

Favourite quotes:

"A cheap Saturday night took you down. You died stupidly and harshly and without the means to hold your own life dear.
Your run to safety was a brief reprieve. You brought me into hiding as your good-luck charm.
I failed you as a talisman - so I stand now as your witness.
Your death defines my life. I want to find the love
we never had and explicate it in your name.
I want to take your secrets public. I want to burn 
down the distance between us. 
I want to give you breath."

“Dead people belong to the live people who claim them most obsessively.” 

“She quoted a dead playwright and called me a bullet with nothing but a future. She understood my lack of self-pity. She knew why I despised everything that might restrict my forward momentum. She knew that bullets have no conscience. They speed past things and miss their marks as often as they hit them.”

Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk (1999)

This book, as many others I reviewed on this blog, has a particular meaning for me. 
First of all a very simple one: it helped me decide the topic of my final exam last year, the story of the grotesque in literature and films. Secondly, I could not read it without crying, without being aware of its being extreme and at the edge of reality, but because of this reason, its characters seem more true than any other living person.  
In a society of repression, and prejudices, being yourself is not always easy, so you prefer wearing masks, transform yourself to become the one you have always wanted to be. You cannot read it if you don't like to be schocked and to be questioned about what life really is. 
It was supposed to be Chuck Palahniuk's first novel to be published, but the editor stopped  it because it was too disturbing. After Fight Club's success, though, they published it, but not in the way Palahniuk wanted. For the book's layout he had taken inspiration from women's magazines, fashion catalogues, etc. in which you are constantly asked to read the rest of an article in another page, so you find yourself jumping from page to page to finish a story. It was considered too confusing and complicated, but I just think it's brilliant.  
It soon became one of his most celebrated books. In 2012, though, after this huge success he had the right to publish it as he wanted, this new version is called Invisible Monsters Remix. Nothing more to add, I'll let Chuck speak...

Favourite quotes:
  
“The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.”

“All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.”

“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.”

“If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?”

“When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?”

“Don't do what you want. Do what you don't want. Do what you're trained not to want. Do the things that scare you the most.”

“We'll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.”

"You can only hold a smile for so long, after that it's just teeth.”

“The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.”

"Almost all the time, you tell yourself you're loving somebody when you're just using them. This only looks like love.” 

“Beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power.”

“Find good in what the world says is evil.”

“I'm not sure what we're running from. Nobody. Or the future. Fate. Growing up. Getting old. Picking up the pieces. As if running we won't have to get on with our lives.”

“The murderer the victim the witness each of us thinks our role is the lead.”

“I'm not straight, and I'm not gay. I'm not bisexual. I want out of the labels. I don't want my whole life crammed into a single word. A story. I want to find something else, unknowable, some place to be that's not on the map. A real adventure.”

“All these thousands of miles later, all these different people I've been, and it's still the same story. Why is it you feel like a dope if you laugh alone, but that's usually how you end up crying? How is it you can keep mutating and still be the same deadly virus?”

“Did you ever think about life as a metaphor for television?”


Next "What shall I read today?":
Choke (Chuck Palahniuk) and The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Muriel Barbery).

What shall I read today? Part 5

Total Kheops (1997), Chourma (1996), Solea (1998)            

Jean - Claude Izzo

Imagine mixing French contemporary history, a detective story, three friends loving the same woman, Lole, and the unforgettable setting of Marseille. With constant references to poetry and music, this trilogy makes you feel so immerse in the story that you almost hear the sound of the sea, while Montale is drinking Lagavulin and listening to his vynils. Amazingly written, a human manifesto against racism, against the boundaries of power, and, most of all, a declaration of love for the Mediterranean sea. I read them all, while I was on holiday with my family in Cap D'Antibes, South of France, the perfect setting for such readings, I couldn't take my eyes off of the pages. Even if it was very successful at its time, it's less-known now, so get ready for a fresh, original, poetical, and breath-taking story.

If you're interested in the author's biography I have found a nice article on The Guardian, published in 2000 after Izzo's death: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2000/feb/02/news.obituaries
I apologise for the use of Italian quotes for Chourmo and Solea, but, unfortunately, I couldn't find them in English, and I don't want to ruin the book with my translation. I read all of them in Italian and these are the quotes I highlighted at the time.

Favourite quotes:

Total Kheops

“I felt suffocated. And alone. More alone than ever. Every year, I ostentatiously crossed out of my address book any friend who'd made a racist remark, neglected those whose only ambition was a new car and a Club Med vacation, and forgot all those who played the Lottery. I loved fishing and silence. Walking the hills. Drinking cold Cassis, Lagavulin, or Oban late into the night. I didn't talk much. Had opinions about everything. Life and death. Good and evil. I was a film buff. Loved music. I'd stopped reading contemporary novels. More than anything, I loathed half-hearted, spineless people.”

“Sometimes, all it takes is one gesture, one word, to change the course of someone's life. Even if you know it won't last forever.”

“...I understand where you're coming from. I know it isn't just a question of revenge. It's the feeling there are some things you can't let pass. If you did, you wouldn't be able to look at yourself in the mirror afterwards.”

“So much violence. If God existed, I'd have strangled him on the spot. Without batting an eyelid. And with all the fury of the damned.”

“Days are only beautiful early in the morning. I should have remembered that. Dawn is merely an illusion that the world is beautiful. When the world opens its eyes, reality reasserts itself, and you're back with the same old shit.”

"Why was it so difficult to make new friends once you were past forty Was it because we didn't have dreams anymore, only regrets?”

“The sensuality of desperate lives. Only poets talk like that. But poetry has never had an answer for anything. All it does it bear witness. To despair. And desperate lives. ”

“We fought over a girl's smile, not because of the color of our skins. It created friendships, not hatreds.”

“Leila was untouchable. She was in my heart now, and I'd carry her always, on this earth that every day gives men a chance.”

“Killing was easy. Dying was something else.”

“Marseilles isn't a city for tourists. There's nothing to see. Its beauty can't be photographed. It can only be shared. It's a place where you have to take sides, be passionately for or against. Only then can you see what there is to see. And you realize, too late, that you're in the middle of a tragedy. An ancient tragedy in which the hero is death. In Marseilles, even to lose you have to know how to fight.”

“Outside, the sun hit me full in the face. I had the feeling I was coming back to life. Real life. Where happiness is an accumulation of insignificant everyday things. A ray of sunlight, a smile, washing drying at a window, a boy dribbling with a tin can, a song by Vincent Scotto, a slight breeze lifting a woman's dress...”

Chourmo

"Di fronte al mare la felicità è un'idea semplice."

"Non ho mai creduto che gli uomini siano buoni. Ma meritano di essere tutti uguali."

"Va bene amarsi. Ma non possiamo vivere in un museo, i n mezzo ai ricordi. Le persone che abbiamo amato non muoiono mai. Viviamo con loro. Sempre..."

"Mettersi in regola con la vita significava mettersi in regola con i ricordi."

"Credevo solo a questi momenti di felicità. Alle briciole dell'abbondanza. Avremo solo ciò che riusciremo a mietere, qui e là. Questo mondo non aveva più sogni. E neppure speranza."

"Gli eccessi sono da condannare. Troppo alcol o troppa religione, è la stessa cosa. Fanno male. E sono quelli che hanno fatto le peggiori cose che vogliono imporre il proprio modo di vedere! Di vivere."

"Sembrava sempre vicina a quel limite estremo dove la specie umana confina con la bellezza animale. L'avevo capito nell'istante in cui l'avevo vista."

"I grossi numeri azzerano la morte. Più ce ne sono, meno contano. Troppi morti sono come l'ignoto. Lontano, non reale. E' vera solo la morte individuale. Quella che ti tocca personalmente. Quella che vediamo con i nostri occhi, o negli occhi di un altro."

"Anche i rimpianti appartengono alla felicità."

Solea

"Era una delle ultime settimane di vita insieme. Una di quelle notti in cui ci sfinivamo a discutere per ore e ore, fumando una sigaretta dietro l'altra e bevendo bicchieri pieni di Lagavulin."


"Quando non si può più vivere si ha il diritto di morire e di trasformare la propria morte in un'ultima scintilla."

"Ma Lole, l'avevo aspettata per tutta la vita, quindi non avevo intenzione di rinunciarci. Avevo bisogno di credere che sarebbe tornata. Che avremmo ricominciato. Perchè i nostri sogni, i nostri vecchi sogni che ci avevano unito e dato già tanta felicità, potessero realizzarsi."

"Sempre in ritardo sulla morte. E sempre in ritardo sulla vita. Sull'amicizia. Sull'amore."

"Li seguii con lo sguardo, scommettendo che si erano incontrati lì, a sedici o diciassette anni. Tre amici e tre amiche. E invecchiavano insieme. Con la gioia semplice del sole sulla pelle. Qui la vita non è altro. Una fedeltà ai gesti più semplici."

" 'Sono spesso degli amori segreti...' cominciai.
'Quelli che dividiamo con una città' continuò con il sorriso sulle labbra. 'Anch'io amo Camus.' "

"Era sempre un buon giorno per amare."

"Perchè non era facile lasciarsi così. Era un po' come perdersi prima ancora di essersi trovati."

"Tutti i veri amori sono così. Fragili come il cristallo. Che l'amore tende gli esseri fino al limite massimo."


Next "What shall I read today?":
My Dark Places (James Ellroy) and Invisible Monsters (Chuck Palahniuk).

What shall I read today? Part 4

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote (1966)

Disturbingly true, amazingly written, incredibly touching. This is a book that makes you think, about the past, about the human mind, about justice. The story? The multiple murder of the Clutter family in 1959 in Holcomb, Kansas. The book is a thoughtful and deep reflection on this family's last day, and Capote crosscuts between them and the planning of the murder by Richard "Dick" Hickcock and Perry Smith. It took Capote six years to complete the it, and it immediately gained a huge success. It's Capote's first non-fiction book, and it asks its readers to think about some universal questions: What leads two young men to plan and kill an entire family without knowing it? What lies behind the human psyche? And, above all, aren't we all guilty in some way?

Favourite quotes:

“It is no shame to have a dirty face- the shame comes when you keep it dirty.”

“Just remember: If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only be the beginning of eternity. ”

“As long as you live, there's always something waiting; and even if it's bad, and you know it's bad, what can you do? You can't stop living.”

“You are a man of extreme passion, a hungry man not quite sure where his appetite lies, a deeply frustrated man striving to project his individuality against a backdrop of rigid conformity. You exist in a half-world suspended between two superstructures, one self-expression and the other self-destruction."

“Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let terror walk right in.”

“The enemy was anyone who was someone he wanted to be or who had anything he wanted to have.”

“I've tried to believe, but I don't, I can't, and there's no use pretending.”

“I thought that Mr. Clutter was a very nice gentleman. I thought so right up to the moment that I cut his throat.”

Beautiful Losers, Leonard Cohen (1966)

Leonard Cohen is one of those artists who can do pretty much everything: singer, song-writer, poet, and writer. One of the aspects I love the most about his art is that both his music and novels think about the boundaries between sacre and profane. His art sounds like an eternal Hallelujah and Beautiful Losers, his second novel, is a very good example of this. I'll write one of the statements written behind my book's cover: "A tale of religious obsession, in which the sensualist cannot be distinguished from the saint, its transcendence lies in its humanism; it is the lesson of what happens when the sacred infects the human, when a lust for the unattainable trumps he will to love a person." I couldn't find better and more concise words to explain it. We should not forget that it is also a very complex book in its writing style, but this doesn't stop the reader from loving every single page and feeling the widest range of emotions at the same time.

Favourite quotes:

“Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore”

“How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?”

“Do not be a magician - be magic!” 

“What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is a caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape.”

“..you wanted to be the Superman who was never Clark Kent” 

“Dream after dream we all lie in each other's arms” 

“Please make me empty, if I'm empty then I can receive, if I can receive it means it comes from somewhere outside of me, if it comes from outside of me I'm not alone! I cannot bear this loneliness. Above all it is loneliness.” 

“It was a dance of masks and every mask was perfect because every mask was a real face and every face was a real mask so there was no mask and there was no face for there was but one dance in which there was but one mask but one true face which was the same and which was a thing without a name which changed and changed into itself over and over.”

Next "What shall I read today?":
Jean-Claude Izzo's noir trilogy: Total Kheops, Chourma, and Solea.

What shall I read today? Part 3

On the Road, Jack Kerouac (1951)
A book is also special for the journey it represents, On the Road was a gift from my dad, while we were dreaming of doing a coast to coast trip in the US. Manifesto of the Beat Generation, jazz as constant soundtrack, friendship, goodbyes, love, adventure, and the stars above looking at them, this book has everything. I still haven't seen the cinematic adaptation, but I think that a book like this has too much to be enclosed in a two-hour film, it's a lifetime journey.

Favourite quotes:

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

“Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.”

“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”

“What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”

“A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.”

“I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.”

“I was surprised, as always, be how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.”

“We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked at each other for the last time.”

“But why think about that when all the golden lands ahead of you and all kinds of unforseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?”

“My aunt once said that the world would never find peace until men fell at their women's feet and asked for forgiveness.”

“Sure baby, mañana. It was always mañana. For the next few weeks that was all I heard––mañana a lovely word and one that probably means heaven.”


Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote (1956)

This is one of the few books I read after watching the film. I think both are incredible, even if in different ways. Holly Golightly is probably one of the most well-rounded characters in literature. First of all, she stands out from the crowd, she's a heroine with loads of fears, she is independent, and New York city is the perfect setting for her life. Moreover, her character is probably the one who influenced the following generations of independent women in life, but also in TV series and films. Where do you think the inspiration for Sex and the City came from? And, remember, no place is like Tiffany's. 

Favourite quotes:
 
“Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell,' Holly advised him. 'That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky."

“You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.”

“I don't want to own anything until I find a place where me and things go together.”

“She was still hugging the cat. "Poor slob," she said, tickling his head, "poor slob without a name. It's a little inconvenient, his not having a name. But I haven't any right to give him one: he'll have to wait until he belongs to somebody. We just sort of took up by the river one day, we don't belong to each other: he's an independent, and so am I. I don't want to own anything until I know I've found the place where me and things belong together. I'm not quite sure where that is just yet. But I know what it's like." She smiled, and let the cat drop to the floor. "It's like Tiffany's," she said.

"It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with those kind men in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets. If I could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany's, then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name.”

“I loved her enough to forget myself, my self pitying despairs, and be content that something she thought happy was going to happen.”

“You can love somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who's a friend.”


Next "What shall I read today?":
In Cold Blood (Truman Capote) and Beautiful Losers (Leonard Cohen).