Totally unrelated, but pretty neat quote

“There are so many clichés about love, food and cooking,” she said. “But cooking with your lover is a great way to see where your relationship is. I have been called an alpha cook, but when I am in love, the man can put as much salt, cream and butter into the dish as he wants. Even if it’s ruined, it’s still the best dish you’ve ever eaten.”

- Kim Sunee, in today's New York Times. She's had a pretty interesting life. I think I'm going to get her book.

Anna Karenina Quote of the Day

She hardly knew at times what it was she feared, and what she hoped for. Whether she feared or desired what had happened, or what was going to happen, and exactly what she longed for, she could not have said.

- Tolstoy, "Anna Karenina"

Bret Easton Ellis's "Velveteen Psycho"

"How do you become Real?" said the butter-soft, black glove-leather Rabbit.

"Real is when you are capable of feeling Real things. Only killing someone can make you Real." The Skinned Horse was old. So old he had become not quite Antique, but definitely Vintage. His pony-spotted coat had been sheared nearly off and tiny down feathers and lofty Egyptian cotton tufted from his battered form.

"But I don't feel anything, Skinned Horse. No pain, no happiness. Nothing. How can I feel Real things?"

"When you shoot a nail in the back of a beautiful girl's head. Or drive a gleaming ax into the body of some asshole you can't stand anyway. Or when you shoot a kitten, and maybe an old lady."

"Will this make me Real?" The Rabbit's shaky voice grew more determined as it echoed through the minimally-decorated bedroom, on the thirty-sixth floor of the best building in the West Eighties.

The Skinned Horse lit a Dunhill and dragged on it slowly, deliberately exhaling a stream of smoke towards the foot of the Conrans tubular-steel framed bed. "Better. Or worse. It will make you Human."

my afternoon if my afternoon was documented by Bret Easton Ellis

so I woke up in the middle of the afternoon kind of disoriented, and remembering the dream I just had where I was in the Sunshine Theater ladies room getting undressed and then I wondered why I had my pants off. I guess that's kind of weird but typical if you were the sort of person who analyzed dreams which I wasn't. My shrink was youngish and always wore boots and chewed Trident and told me every time she quit smoking except it never lasted and I always saw her when I was late, outside on her cell phone smoking her Parliaments. Stretched out, took a big slug of water from the half open bottle on my nightstand. Thought about ordering Burritoville, maybe some nachos. Bean burrito, extra guac. The usual. I flipped through an old Salinger paperback I picked up from the tiny book store on St Marks that got smaller by half every year. It wasn't one of the famous ones they made you read in school, it was pretty rambling bullshit but somehow cool. I stuffed it in the back pocket of my jeans, threw on my down coat, pulled up the hood of my red hoodie with the Looney Tunes cat on it that vaguely irritated me, and headed out for a walk. Anywhere. It was four-thirty and I hadn't been out all day. I never did get the burrito.

I'm reading "Anna Karenina" again

"Yes, I understand it all now," said Darya Alexandrovna. "You can't understand it; for you men, who are free and make your own choice, it's always clear whom you love. But a girl's in a position of suspense, with all a woman's or maiden's modesty, a girl who sees you men from afar, who takes everything on trust,-- a girl may have, and often has, such a feeling that she cannot tell what to say."

"Yes, if the heart does not speak..."

"No, the heart does speak; but just consider: you men have views about a girl, you come to the house, you make friends, you criticize, you wait to see if you have found what you love, and then, when you are sure you love her, you make an offer...."

"Well, that's not quite it."

"Anyway you make an offer, when your love is ripe or when the balance has completely turned between the two you are choosing from. But a girl is not asked. She is expected to make her choice, and yet she cannot choose, she can only answer 'yes' or 'no.'"