Kate Bernheimer Quotes

“Fairy tales represent hundreds of years of stories based on thousands of years of stories told by hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions of tellers.”

“Fairy tales are the skeletons of story, perhaps. Reading them often provides an uneasy sensation—a gnawing familiarity—that comforting yet supernatural awareness of living inside a story.”

“Huysmans takes the old trope of moon-as-woman and replaces its romantic connotations with decadent ones: the moon here is woman as clamorous lunatic, as convulsive epileptic.”

“For Zola, as for Huysmans, nature itself is uncanny because it is the domain of the feminine, a domain that is constitutionally defective, lacking, even pathological.”

“Beer bottles, whiskey bottles, brown glass, green. They fell to the lawn and I'd feel serene. Adam was king to my stilted queen.”

“Thankfully, the farmers understand my request that the children not be allowed to peer through the windows at me.It would be alarming for them to see me with their dolls, to see me using the knife on their faces. There are some things children never should see.”

“There were still few rules at Down House, and Charles was not very good at enforcing the ones he and Emma did make. This was well known among his children. In 1855, when Lenny was about five, Charles walked in to find his son jumping up and down and tumbling all over a new sofa.'Oh Lenny, Lenny,' Charles said. 'You know it is against all rules.''Then,' Lenny said to his papa, 'I think you'd better go out of the room.'And so Charles did.”

“Though Charles II both craved and enjoyed female companionship till the end of his life, there is no question that by the cold, rainy autumn of 1682 his physical appetites had diminshed considerably. The Duchess of Portsmouth was, after all, more than twenty years his junior; and there comes a time in nearly every such relationship when the male partner is simply unable to fully accommodate the female partner. Or as Samuel Pepys tartly noted in his diary, "the king yawns much in council, it is thought he spends himself overmuch in the arms of Madame Louise, who far from being wearied, seems fresher than ever after sporting with the king.”

“If you ever find yourself coming out of a time machine, run. Run away as fast you can. Don't stop. Don't try to talk. Nothing good can come out of it." narrator Charles Yu, not author Charles Yu p19”

“Ok, I see. When they say Charles Wovenu is passing by, everyone wants to see Charles Wovenu. But when they say to a child that "Bibi" is passing by, every child is hiding for "Bibi". What makes the difference is the impacts.”