Watching The Godfather on videotape

There comes a time halfway through any halfway decent liberal arts major's college career when she no longer has any idea what she believes. She flies violently through air polluted by conflicting ideas and theories, never stopping at one system of thought long enough to feel at home. All those books, all that talk, and, oh, the self-reflection. Am I an existentialist? A Taoist? A transcendentalist? A modernist, a postmodernist? A relativist-positivist-historicist-dadaist-deconstructionist? Was I Appollonian? Was I Dionysian (or just drunk)? Which was right and which was wrong, impressionism or expressionism? And while we're at it, is there such a thing as right or wrong?

Until I figured out that the flight between questions is itself a workable system, I craved answers, rules. A code. So by my junior year, I was spending part of every week, sometimes every day, watching The Godfather on videotape.

Sarah Vowell - Take The Cannoli, 44 (of Take the Cannoli)

Poignant pyramid

Everything was piled on the floor of my room, a poignant pyramid of brassieres and dancing slippers and pretty things I packed in Holly's only suitcase.

Truman Capote - Breakfast at Tiffany's, 95

The softness of the woman who is not there

This is the result of years looking at sexy pictures behind bars; looking at the legs and breasts of women in popular magazines; evaluating the hardness of the steel halls and the softness of the woman who is not there.

Jack Kerouac - On The Road, 126

Cards scattered, sad songs

The cards were scattered on the table, face up, face down, and they seemed to foretell that whatever we did to one another would be washed away by liquor or explained away by sad songs.

Denis Johnson - Jesus' Son

Quiet love of magical metaphor

Did she love his music with the quiet love that draws us to a magical metaphor or to the harmony of two colours on a painting? Or was it rather the kind of aggressive passion that makes us join political parties?

Milan Kundera - Immortality, 89

To have someplace to go, even if it was just hell

I miss singing them. I miss the harmony. Some Sunday mornings, in the middle of secular superstitious rituals like reading The New York Times Magazine or watching that beserk Sam Donaldson on TV, I'll hum "I'll fly away" as I make coffee, remembering what it was like to have a Sunday morning purpose, remembering what it was like to have someplace to go, even if it was just hell.

Sarah Vowell - The End is Near, Nearer, Nearest, 31 (of Take The Cannoli)

Manuscripts of the snow

...like a monk peering into the manuscripts of the snow...

Jack Kerouac - On The Road, 108

Shattered prisms

It was as though her eyes were shattered prisms, the dots of blue and grey and green like broken bits of sparkle.

Truman Capote - Breakfast at Tiffany's, 67

Seraphically drunk

He was finally an Angel, as I always knew he would become; but like any Angel he still had rages and furies, and that night when we all left the party and repaired to the Windsor bar in one vast brawling gang, Dean became frantically and demoniacally and seraphically drunk.

Jack Kerouac - On The Road, 248

Holes the size of heaven and hell

I had holes the size of heaven and hell in my head and my heart.

Sarah Vowell - Take The Cannoli, 46 (of Take The Cannoli)

Slowly, slowly daybreak silences

The candle burns too short to hold. Out it goes, exposing the starlight, the stars spinning at the window like a visible carolling that slowly, slowly daybreak silences.

Truman Capote - A Christmas Memory, 154 (of Breakfast at Tiffany's, Penguin)

Algebra of love

In the algebra of love a child is a symbol of the magical sum of two beings.

Milan Kundera - Immortality, 64