Sunday, October 12, 2014

In Sunlight and In Shadow

I am taking my time enjoying every word of this book. The ideas and sentences (Mark Helperin) are unbelievably beautiful. Here are a few of the hundred I could share.

About New York City:
"You know those Russian Easter eggs that you look into? I have a few, excessively bejeweled.... When you look into these things...you see something perfect, rich in color, mysteriously deep. As a child I wanted more than anything to be able actually to go inside them and enter another world.
---And there it is, self-contained, gold at sunset, red at dawn. And in between run all the blues, greens, and grays of every sea in every condition of light. An isle in the water, infinitely complex and forever giving, the hive of millions. Everything happens there, just and unjust, beautiful and hideous, joyful, painful, powerful---and it's all there for you threescore and ten if you can make it. Then it's gone."

Returning to "normal" life after war:
"Though he had never stated it, he had felt from early childhood that life was magnificently intense, in splendor overwhelming, in sight demanding and in time very short. And that therefore the only worthwhile thing other than a noble showing in the face of its dangers was the ravishing connection of one heart to another. This made him uninterested in the idea of people sitting at table, talking and posing. But occasionally he would attend dinner parties, because he recognized that not everyone in the world thought as he did, and he had always hoped that someday at a painful social event he would encounter a woman whose views were in this regard the same, and who, like him, was so naturally lonely that, for her as well, making small talk and holding cocktails was somewhat like being burned at the stake."

About a beautiful woman:
"---when she put down her purse on a bench the strap fell over the arm in two perfect, parallel sine waves, as if she were infused with so much beauty it had to find outlet even in her accidents."

"She was twisting her pearls dangerously. He imagined them clattering onto the terrace floor and rolling out the drains to rain down on the garden below."

About a sailboat's wake in water:
"The Crispin's wake rolling out on the sea was as soft as the glint of polished silver."

About driftwood:
"They were fishing near a beach littered with driftwood silvered by Maine winters. Their nearly divine economy of movement, their speed above the waves, their darting, their effortless suspension and decisive plunges were evidence that they had received their instruction from the angels."

From the perspective of an artist:
"The painter had watched him, and understood that in taking in the true composition of the scene he had stopped time, which is what the painter did day by day. He, the painter, smiled and held his daughter tight as he watched Catherine rise from the group and, as if loosed from the moorings of gravity and time, glide across the sand until, hardly knowing what she had done she had clasped Harry in her arms as though no one had been watching, because they had all drifted away long before."

About those who have, and those who have not:
"From the east, fame and art; from the west, power and wealth. Each probed the world of  the other in search of advantages less likely to find them than would a direct meteorite strike. By definition, the artists, writers and actors were so desperate for money that, had a decent amount been offered for doing so, they might have taken the few steps to the Atlantic Ocean and swum it, and yet they never talked about money in the presence of those who had it, lest those who had it think they might need it. And those who had the money came because , having crested the top of the hill and seen that on the other side was nothing, they wanted to feel the touch of life they had left on the slope behind them. This was why they spoke so little. The artists thought it was because of the monied were deracinated WASPS who somehow had less soul than others, and that, at least in comparison to the newly arrived and deeply engaged, they had nothing to say. But it was not so. IT was only that success had introduced the bankers and lawyers to futility, and they could do nothing but look back, as if from the land of the dead, and with gentle envy and equal affection at those still animated in struggle."

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