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98523c9
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It's where she belongs, she craves the caress of the violent shore, to come alive like that once more in a clash of stone and then to die.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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764bdda
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Who's the Devil?" Frances crouches down as if she were talking to Trixie. "That's something I'll never tell you, Lily, no matter how old you get to be, because the Devil is shy. It makes him angry when someone recognizes him, so once they do the Devil gets after them. And I don't want the Devil to get after you." "Is the Devil after you?" "Yes." "Jesus can beat the Devil." "If God wants." "God is against the Devil." "God made the Devil." "..
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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a177073
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She never knows when it might strike. The rage. And when it does, she loses her grip on herself--literally. At times, she could swear she sees another self--shiny black phantom, faceless, as though clad in a bodysuit--leaping out of her, pulling the rest of her in its wake. Over the edge.
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emotion
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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176fb19
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Jetzt bleibt ihm nur noch er Tod, doch der lasst auf sich warten, weil Mahmoud ein Gewohnheitstier ist und sich daran ewohnt hat, am Leben zu sein.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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9d1b47f
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She ran right into his arms and he swung her around like a little kid, laughing, and then they hugged. He thought his heart would kill him, he'd had no clue what it was capable of.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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baa02bc
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It was a moment of equal parts anxiety and awe, like the striking of a wide seam of gold. The prospector sinks to his knees--he's only been looking for coal. At a gush of oil he'd hoot, baptize himself and buy the drinks. But the sight of gold is different. He observes a moment's silence. Then he rises, eyes watering. How to get it properly out of the earth? How not to be robbed in the meantime?
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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8c96dc9
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All memories soften with age, and the good ones are also the most perishable (...) conjured up till they faded to nothing. Like cave paintings by candlelight, she could only glimpse them now in the dark from the corner of her eye.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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412ff14
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It had changed to hate. The hate that she prayed for Jesus to take away. But it was also part of what had kept her going so how could she do without it now? That kind of hate is a species of animated scrap metal. Rusting, corroding inside, leaching into the vital organs.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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efe92df
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Who is that in the glass? She sees herself for the first time. She doesn't require soft light, not at her age, not with her looks, so the effect of three candles is excessively ravishing. Her hair sparks at every brush stroke. The candlelight carves a grotto in the gloom around her. The mirror is a sacred pool, in it she sees the future: her lips swollen with kissing, eyes caressing, come with me to my home beneath the sea and I will love y..
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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ef99dfb
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Well, what was wrong with it?" "We don't know," says James. "That's a stupid rotten answer." "Life is sometimes rotten and stupid."
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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66a4e73
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James could do all this because he had made a bargain with himself: he wouldn't try to get killed, nor would he try to survive. He could do all this because he felt terribly sorry for the men he rescued. They harbored the saddest and most foolish desire of all. The desire to go on living.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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5e2ff42
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I thought I would get calmer, surer, but each time we come close I feel almost sick at first. As though each time vibrates with the times before. I feel a terrible sorrow coming up my throat, I don't know why. And it can only be consoled against the length of her body. Lying down with her for the first time... all the pain I didn't know I had, till at her touch it disappeared like smoke. Is this what purgatory feels like? To burn painlessly..
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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f98e76f
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Doch die Erinnerung spielt uns Streiche. Erinnern iat ein anderes Wort fur Erfinden, und nichts ist unzuverlassiger.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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53b477f
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It's a sin for Lily to let Mercedes think it was Daddy who beat up Frances. But he has done it in the past. Surely truth can be borrowed across time without perishing. Shelf life, so to speak.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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af3d205
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Kathleen would not know a friend if one sank its teeth into her wrist--which is more or less what she expects from the mass of other girls. She skirts them cautiously, as if they were dangerous wild animals loitering about a common watering hole ready to pounce, you'd never know why or what hit you. She fears them, sharp glinting creatures, and hasn't a clue what they talk about or how they do it. How they merge into gregarious packs. Kathl..
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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120bf22
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Rats may scamper across it and remain rats. Birds may fly above it and remain birds; they may alight and tear and eat and prick up their heads to stare motionless and beady for a moment before pecking and eating again, and remain birds. But no man may venture into this space between the lines and remain a man. That is the difference. No man may enter, either stealthily on his belly alone, or noisily on two feet racing through glue with a th..
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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c298e63
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A war changes people in a number of ways. It either shortcuts you to your very self; or it triggers such variations that you might as well have been a larva, pupating indampness, darkness and tightly wrapped puttees. Then, providing you don't take flight from a burst shell, you emerge from your khaki cocoon so changed from what you were that you fear you've gone mad, because people at home treat you as though you were someone else. Someone ..
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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919fddc
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Corruption hangs in the air around a great talent. Such a gift is unstable by nature, apt to embarrass its handlers. About her there is the whiff of the entertainer. Like vaudeville nipping the heels of grand opera. The maestro smells all this on Kathleen and cools his blood to a temperature undetectable by wild animals.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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6db15f7
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It's not the cold that makes you sleep yourself to death in the Arctic, it's the smooth pallor of the landscape, and the desert has that same smooth pallor, though Arabic. It's the whiteness, the sameness of everything, that makes you fall asleep out of life, parched or frozen and so so comfortable when you finally let it roll over your mind, like a rolling-pin over dough.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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7968ab3
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A small grazing gesture ignites the need for closer, and breaks the surface of the water, never in you enough, gulping air, never contain you enough, on dry land now, never hold you enough, the desert heat, drink you, oasis lover shimmering under a palm, I will burn to ashes here then blow away until that merciful peak is discovered, and once that is discovered, the slow tumble back down the hill, buckets of water spilling in slow motion, s..
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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a82468a
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Here is the place called Awake. On the other side of this line is the country of Asleep. And you see this shaded area in between? Don't linger there. It is No Man's Land.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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35925c0
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The moon may drive men mad but it can calm a savage girl, for it is cool, precise, it is lucid.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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cd78c03
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Frances is a sealed letter. It doesn't matter where she's been or who's pawed her, no one gets to handle the contents no matter how grimy the envelope. And it's for sure no one's going to be able to steam her open.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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18686e7
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Frances is a diamond, passed from filthy paw to paw but never diminished. The men who handle her can leave no mark because her worth is far above them. Hard, helpless, buried. You can hear it in her voice and see it in her eyes, she is waiting for a strong and fearless miner to go way down and rescue her up to the surface where she can shine for all she's worth.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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7653ca0
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I am burning. I have to live, I have to sing, I want to transform myself into a thousand different characters and carry their life with me onto the stage where it's so bright and so dark at the same time, just knowing there are three thousand people out there longing to be swept away by the passion that's about to flood out from scarlet curtains, to this I consecrate my body and my soul, I can give no more than all of myself, I feel my hear..
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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f8436b8
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She is so beautiful. My Rose. Finer than sculpture, softer than sand. Rose, I'm kissing you now. Oh God, I have to kiss her. I will die if I don't kiss her, I know that now. It is a fact. I will die. It will kill me.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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62bf7f7
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Dark and sweet, the elixir of love is in her mouth. The more I drink, the more I remember all the things we've never done. I was a ghost until I touched you. Never swallowed mortal food until I tasted you, never understood the spoken word until I found your tongue. I've been a sleepwalker, sad somnambula, hands outstretched to strike the solid thing that could awaken me to life at last. I have only ever stood here under this lamp, against y..
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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d8ff3dd
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Then she kissed me in that way that makes me hate time.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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c842c33
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When will she discover that I am from a lesser race of immortals? But the high deities have always needed pixies to persuade them down to earth. When she no longer needs an intermediary, will she still love me?
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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bebb529
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There is love, there is music, there is no limit, there is work, there is the precious sense that this is the hour of grace when all things gather and distill to create the rest of my life. I don't believe in God, I believe in everything.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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25f4a8e
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It's a self-portrait and the artist is in love.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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e53868f
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No one knows it yet, but Cape Breton is a dress rehearsal for the Great Depression.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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4492c06
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It's because a real and beautiful voice delicately rends the chest, discovered the heart, and holds it beating against a stainless edge until you long to be pierced utterly. For the voice is everything you do not remember. Everything you should not be able to live without and yet, tragically, do.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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e964a2f
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Anthony has experienced the feeling before--no matter where he is, there is something about people's struggles to keep their memories that bruises his heart, because it's too soft to break. The world is his orphanage. Why he should feel so sorry for the other people on the planet is a mystery to him. He's actually a very happy person. It's just that he doesn't know there's a difference between love and empathy, nor does he question why he s..
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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1ae65e1
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Good women discuss these things the way epidemiologists identify and track disease without alarming the public. This is woman's work. Men are unfitted for it by nature and should be protected from it the same way women shouldn't have to go down the mines. Men are so innocent.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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849ed3a
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I am here as a speck, but I don't feel scared or about to be blown away, I feel like all New York is a warm embrace just waiting to enfold me.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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d0d5d2d
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She follows the putrid cloud downstairs and
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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cc6ef82
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James discovered that there is nothing
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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4ea3c2c
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He was neither frightened nor skeptical, but felt himself drawn in with an involuntary faith--which is what faith is--
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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d4b6e7f
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He felt, before he learned anything about where she came from, that the photograph had made them one.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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422e6f2
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How unhappy are they who have a gift that's left to germinate in darkness. The pale plant will sink invisible roots and live whitely off their blood.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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58be4b0
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He loved her way: acting casual, working like a Trojan, singing like an angel. Not "angelically." The voice of an angel. Winged, lethal, close to the sun."
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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f117811
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Freedom consists of being insulated from the envy and ignorance of the unimportant people who temporarily surround her.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |
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42d3187
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The MacKinnons were always new, always almost just like everyone else. Always next door to normal. It was like growing up in the witness protection program without changing your name.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald |