dual personalities

I am becoming one of those people who is chronically afflicted by lack of bookshelf space. But who wouldn’t want to be able to sit down and open a book and just start reading?

“Dagobert is always thinking of ways for me to begin a novel. He has the mistaken impression that I am happier when occupied.

The sun was setting in the hills somewhere and the bay had gone pink and blue; the water was so smooth and nebulous that you couldn’t tell where it left off and the sky began. I continued to sip my Dubonnet and watch the frocks along the Promenade go by.

Gradually I became aware of a familiar face above the shrubbery which divided the Negresco terrace from the pavement. It regarded me interrogatively. Where, the dark, reproachful eyes seemed to say, had I gone so suddenly? My admirer caught up with me again.

I looked away feeling foolish, only to realize that he was now making his way towards the deserted table just beside our own. Dagobert, too, had noticed him. He came out of brood suddenly.

“Say, for instance,” he said towards the newcomer, “that man suddenly fell dead.”

Dagobert does not always realize how far his voice carries. My friend stopped short in his tracks and look acutely uncomfortable. I smiled at him vaguely, handed Dagobert the dish of olives and tried to change the subject. Meanwhile a waiter had installed him at the table beside us. He ordered black coffee and unfolded a newspaper.

“There is a knife in his back,” Dagobert said.

I heard the paper beside me rustle. I hastily finished my Dubonnet and gathered up my handbag.

Corpse Diplomatique, Delano Ames

“That ride was perhaps the most wonderful thing that happened to them in Narnia. Have you ever had a gallop on a horse? Think of that; and then take away the heavy noise of the hoofs and the jingle of the harness and imagine instead the almost noiseless padding of the great paws. Then imagine instead of the black or grey or chestnut back of the horse, the soft roughness of golden fur, and the mane flying back in the wind. And then imagine you are going about twice as fast as the fastest racehorse. But this is a mount that doesn’t need to be guided and never grows tired. He rushes on and on, never missing his footing, never hesitating, threading his way with perfect skill between tree-trunks, jumping over bush and briar and the smaller streams, wading the larger, swimming the largest of all. And you are riding not on a road nor in a park nor even on the downs but right across Narnia, in spring, down solemn avenues of beech and across sunny glades of oak, through wild orchards of snow-white cherry trees, past roaring waterfalls and mossy rocks and echoing caverns, up windy slopes alight with gorse bushes and across the shoulders of heathery mountains and along giddy ridges and down, down, down again into wild valleys and out into acres of blue flowers.”

The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis

“I’m sitting in a small screening room waiting for a movie to begin. The room fills up. There aren’t enough seats. People are bunching up in the aisles and looking around helplessly. I’m next to my friend Bob Gottlieb, watching all this. The director of the movie decides to solve the problem by asking all the children at the screening to share seats. I watching in mounting frustration. Finally, I say to Bob, “It’s really very simple. Someone should go get some folding chairs and set them up in the aisles.”

Bob looks at me. “Nora, he says, “we can’t do everything.”

My brain clears in an amazing way.

Nora. We can’t do everything.

I have been given the secret of life.

Although it’s probably a little late.”

The Story of My Life in 3,500 Words or Less, Nora Ephron

Plus, sometimes you find fun bookmarks like this.