Eileen's Summer Reading List

Everything that happened has already happened, if you look hard enough and far enough back in time.

Doubt was like rot. Excise it at the first speckling, the first stain, the first faint stench of decay. But then – I suppose because my mind was on the wine – I thought of that other kind of rot, the soft gray fungus that sometimes afflicts the late grape harvest if the air turns unexpectedly moist. That rot causes the grapes to yield up a heavy, viscous juice of stupendously rich flavor. The wine pressed from such grapes was the best of all. Maybe doubt was like that sometimes. Maybe it, too, could yield rich fruit.

Love shouldn't make a beggar of one. I wouldn't want love if I had to beg for it, to barter or qualify it. And I should despise it if anyone ever begged for my love. Love is something that must be given -- it can't be bought with words or pity, or even reason.

I'm not really in love with Helen any more, but I can't break the habit. It sneaks up on you, Anne -- the habit. And after all emotion is gone and logic takes over, the habit is still there. For the rest of your life.

And suddenly you recall all the senseless time-wasting things you've done...the wasted minutes you'll never recover. And you realize that time is the most precious thing. Because time is life. It's the only thing you can never get back. You can lose a girl and perhaps win her back -- or find another. But a second -- this second -- when it goes, it's irrevocably gone.

Love like this wasn't what he'd planned or wanted or expected, surely it was indeed a trap, for even when you tried to run away, it followed you through the grass and lay down beside you, it overtook common sense and willpower.

I knew that men told you the truth for one of two reasons: when they wished to be rid of what they couldn't bear to carry, or when they wished to include you in what they knew so their stories wouldn't be lost.

This was the virtue of the dark: you were who you had always been, only no one could see you.

Fate was both what we were given and what we made for ourselves.

People will disappoint you with their cruelty every time.

Let he who stands before death, he who knows that the end is nigh and who sees the moment at which it all must cease, let him speak of life.

The three passions are love, hate, and ignorance. Ignorance is the strongest.