January 2014 – Bookswept

January 23, 2014

Into the Wild

“He wasn’t antisocial — he always had friends, and everybody liked him — but he could go off and entertain himself for hours. He didn’t seem to need toys or friends. He could be alone without being lonely.”

Into the Wild, p. 107
By Jon Krakauer
Published 1996

January 20, 2014

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

“He was like a man who had served a term in prison or had been to Harvard College or had lived for a long time with foreigners in South America. He was like a person who had been somewhere that other people are not likely to go or had done something that others are not apt to do.”

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, p. 21
By Carson McCullers
Published 1940

January 18, 2014

Beatrice and Virgil

“Colonialism is a terrible bane for a people upon whom it is imposed, but a blessing for a language. English’s drive to exploit the new and the alien, its zeal in robbing words from other languages, its incapability to feel qualms over the matter, its museum-size overabundance of vocabulary, its shoulder-shrug approach to spelling, its don’t-worry-be-happy concern for grammar – the result was a language whose colour and wealth Henry loved.”

Beatrice and Virgil, p. 23
By Yann Martel
Published 2010