"I don't think everybody's made of iron, buddy"

J.D. Salinger

The Beatles

I don’t know how
Someone controlled you
They bought and sold you
I look at the world and I notice it’s turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps

"Welcome to the age of un-innocence. No one has breakfast at Tiffany's and no one has affairs to remember."

Carrie: I've done the merry go round, I've been through the revolving door, and I feel like I've met somebody I can stand still with for a minute and... don't you wanna stand still with me?
Big: You dragged me out to a park at three in the morning to ask me if I wanna stand still with you?
Carrie: ...Yes

Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do you start missing everybody.

Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger

"...she must seek them abroad..."

"No one who had ever seen Catherine Moorland in her infancy, would have supposed her to be born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother; her own person and disposition, were all equally against her. Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was Richard-and he had never been handsome."

Northanger Abbey
Jane Austen

"And he had taken Gabriel, too."

"Gabe?" The new child stirred slightly in his sleep. Jonas looked over at him. "There could be love," Jonas whispered.

The Giver
Lois Lowry

"The strolling woman had been right, he was going the wrong way."

"Strangers on a train. If there was an emergency, would they help one another? (Never overestimate people.)"


When Will There Be Good News?
Kate Atkinson

"It was impossible for her to say what she did not feel, however trivial the occasion..."

"It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others."

Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen


Growing up I always liked to think of myself as Elizabeth Bennet. In fact, I'm extremely Marianne.

"You've lost me in your sea of pronouns."


I'm not afraid to admit this comes from my all time favorite t.v. show: Dawson's Creek.

I Think I Wanna Marry You

Proving, proving; and for no other reason than that he was married to a woman who had somehow managed to put him forever on the defensive, who loved him when he was nice, who lived according to what she happened to feel like doing and who might at any time- this was the hell of it- who might at any time of day or night just happen to feel like leaving him. It was ludicrous and as simple as that.

Revolutionary Road
Richard Yates

Keep me up till five because all your stars are out, and for no other reason...Oh dare to do it Buddy! Trust your heart. You're a deserving craftsman. It would never betray you. Good night. I'm feeling very much over-excited now, and a little dramatic, but I think I'd give almost anything on earth to see you writing a something, an anything, a poem, a tree, that was really and truly after your own heart.

Seymour An Introduction
J.D. Salinger

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy.

“[Gatsby] stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too fast...and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever.”
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald


I try to figure out why it is that I am so in love with this novel. I think about Gatsby and the detestable Daisy and I try to figure out why it is that I care about a novel with less than likable main characters. And then I realize that it isn't the love story between Daisy and Gatsby that gets me every time, and it isn't even the beautiful relationship that Nick has with Gatsby. I think the real reason that I love this story so much is because every word is so powerful. Fitzgerald did an amazing thing by creating such a beautiful piece of art about such (mostly) selfish people. It makes me see those people as a little less selfish, it makes me almost give them allowances for being so cruel. And that's kind of scary.

The Only Exception

Forgive the total emo mushy-ness of this. I'm not a huge Paramore fan but the lyrics to this song are dazzling.

So Many Opportunities to Not Be Alone

And, still more salient, why had I jumped into the car in the first place?...There seem to me at least a dozen answers to these questions, and all of them, however dimly, valid enough. I think, though, that I can dispense with them, and just reiterate that the year was 1942, that I was twenty-three, newly drafted, newly advised in the efficacy of keeping close to the herd-and, above all, I felt lonely. One simply jumped into loaded cars, as I see it, and stayed seated in them.
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters
J.D. Salinger




It's interesting that in a city as full as New York that people are in a constant state of loneliness. People are yearning for some type of interaction, any type of interaction. A smile on the train, a wave at the station attendant, a regular trip to a local coffee shop, anything to feel a connection. I usually end up in conversations with those around me. And for those few minutes we share something that no one else will. We complain about the MTA or remark on the weather and it isn't the conversation, but rather knowing that you aren't alone. And even in something as simple as that we find that we've jumped into a loaded car to fight off the loneliness.

And I hope they don't feel so lonely anymore.

Rain, Rain, So Much Rain

He stopped to look ahead. Then the rain started again and this time it wasn't a passing shower, the sky was full of dark gray clouds, he turned up the collar of his suite jacket, it was going to get worse, nothing surer. And he would get bloody soaked.
By the Burn
James Kelman



It has been quite the week here in Lizzy Land. Finals are quickly approaching and it's a good thing because I literally couldn't take another day of classes. By far this has been the most challenging year of my life. But I'm still here. And things can only get better. At least they have to. So, do me a favor, Mother Nature, cheer up. I don't know how much more rain I can take.

But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived.

No, the romance and beauty were all gone from the river. All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the lovely flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctor but a "break" that ripples above some deadly disease? Are not all her visible charms sown think with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he ever see her beauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her professionally, and comment upon her unwholesome condition all to himself? And doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his trade?
Mark Twain

Sometimes I feel this way about The City.

More Than What it Means

How terrible it is when you say I love you and the person on the other end shouts back 'What?'
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters
J.D. Salinger

Not with the fire in me now.

TAPE: --gooseberries, she said. I said again I thought it was hopeless and no good going on and she agreed, without opening her eyes. [Pause.] I asked her to look at me and after a few moments--[Pause.]--after a few moments she did, but the eyes just list, because of the glare. I bent over to get them in the shadow and they opened. [Pause. Low.] Let me in. [Pause] We drifted in among the flags and stuck. The way they went down, sighing, before the stem! [Pause.] I lay down across her with my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side.
[Pause. Krapp's lips move. No sound.]
Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth might be uninhabited.
[Pause.]
Here I end this reel. Box--[Pause.]--three, spool--[Pause.]--five. [Pause.] Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back.
[Krapp motionless staring before him. The tape runs on in silence.]
CURTAIN

Krapp's Last Tape
By Samuel Beckett


I think this kind of speaks for itself.

The most important things work out rather beautifully.

"For the faithful, the patient, the hermetically pure, all the important things in this world — not life and death, perhaps, which are merely words, but the important things — work out rather beautifully."
- J.D. Salinger

I'm trying really hard not to be to much of a downer. A friend of mine had a stroke on Sunday night, at 28, and was declared brain dead yesterday. He wrote me a letter and I never responded, due to my selfishness of focusing on my extremely busy life. Sometimes in life we lose contact with people we care about and become insular. It's so easy to do living in The City where every second can be spent doing something with someone. We cancel plans here and there, forget to call, talk of meeting up but never do. It's so easy. So I figured now was as good a time as ever to finally get back to him.

Sorry it took so long, R. Hope this helps:

From R:

February 2, 2011
Hey Liz,

thanks for taking a moment to read and digest. It's much appreciated.

i wrote a friend:

I'm in the place that's been my home for 27 years... and i'm lost.

so she responded with:

I am beginning to think being lost is just part of it, who ever thinks they are found is naive. What would being found look like? Definitely not like me.

i responded:

life is a journey, and in every journey we're always looking for something. At each stage we find what we're looking for, we appreciate it for what it is, then we begin the next trek. If within this journey we find that we're lost, then we either continue seeking for what we've been looking for, or we fool ourselves into believing that what we've found is the answer or that we'll never find what we were looking for in the first place. I believe if we accept the last two options, the all we've found is complacency. At this point in my life, there are certain things I want to find, and find myself in. Once I'm found within those things, I can appreciate them and find myself in something else at the next step. But if I'm perpetually lost and I've accepted being lost as my way of being, what motivates me to continue searching?


Dear R,
Never stop searching for your way. It's interesting that at different points in life we are so sure of how things will progress and how they will turn out. When we're little we have this sense that we know exactly how life will turn out. "I'm going to be a doctor!" "A pilot!" "I'll be President!!" No one ever tells us we can't accomplish everything we want. It's only when we grow up and exist in this imperfect and damaged world that we trick ourselves into thinking that we can't accomplish absolutely everything that we want to. The road gets thick with prickly bushes sometimes and it can be hard to find our way back to our road, but it's still there. It just means we have to cut some bushes down. Walk on, R. Never stop searching for your way in life. Time is precious and life is way to short.

I'll see you soon,
Elizabeth

Coldplay-Sparks

Kind of the perfect song for a rainy day such as this.