"The book didn’t want anyone to know it was there. If it were destroyed, everyone who’d survived in the story would be gone too. There would be no one left to remember the ones who had died. The balance of the world goes horribly askew when a story is confiscated; it becomes a darker, more ominous place." -- from 'The Book Censor's Library' by Bothayna Al-Essa; trans. Ranya Abdeirahman, Sawad Hussain
"Only when I was young did I believe that it was important to remember what happened in every novel I read. Now I know the truth: what matters is what you experience while reading, the states of feeling that the story evokes, the questions that rise to your mind, rather than the fictional events described." -- from 'The Vulnerables' by Sigrid Nunez
"At one o’clock in the afternoon, with the crushing heat over the town, the dog’s howling was unbearable. The animal had been there on the Place Michelet for two days, and for two days it had barked." -- from 'The Red Collar' by Jean-Christophe Rufin, trans. Adriana Hunter
A gem of a novella set in France immediately after WW1 and the three people linked by the barking dog: a local peasant who is a decorated veteran of the war who is now in prison for dishonoring the nation, the officer who arrives to investigate his case, and a woman with an interesting story. And there is the dog who followed the prisoner to war. #WednesdayBookQuote#reading#books@bookstodon
"In dreams, he could perceive the vast spider’s web of souls, the wool ball of existences interleaved in time, and he could follow a single life as one might pull on a thread, jump from one moment to another and, from the infinite heavens, even observe the forces that cause the stars to move, immense dark flows like streams of nothingness." -- from 'The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild' by Mathias Énard, trans. by Frank Wynne
"Many tried to describe her indescribable aura. Some said it was akin to fine filaments of strummed silver that hovered over her dark cascading hair. Others were reminded of the southern lights, brilliant streaks that hissed across her deep-sky eyes. Still others said her fingers were like holy spinnerets, that her every nimble gesture was an act of brilliant, captivating love." -- from 'The Extinction of Irena Rey' by Jennifer Croft
"I used to draw and write to keep a hold on my imagination, certain that I was going to lose it, since all adults lost their imagination at some point. I clung desperately to the childlike gaze that finds motives for curiosity and astonishment in everything it encounters." -- from Cross Stitch by Jazmina Barrera, trans. Christina MacSweeney
An engaging debut novel about friendship, embroidery, travel, literature, and the coming-of-age of three friends. And now I really want to learn how to do the complex Yucatán needlework technique of xmanikté.