Anxiety

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Of course, the older porters and warehouse workers were conservative enough not to have anything in their heads; but among the young people such and such had borne witness by their conduct that the new spirit of indignation had known how to insidiously gain entry... In the spring a street riot had taken place, although a new constitution, adapted to the demands of the new time, was already present in the draft, which a little later, despite the objection of Lebrecht Kröger and a few other stubborn old gentlemen, was elevated to state constitution by a Senate decree. People's representatives were elected and a citizenry met. But there was no rest. The world was all in disarray. Everyone wanted to revise the constitution and the electoral law, and the citizens bickered. "Estate principle!" said some; also Johann Buddenbrook, the Consul, said so. "Universal suffrage!" said the others; Hinrich Hagenstrom said so too. Still others shouted, "General election of estates!" and perhaps they even knew what that meant. Then there were such ideas in the air as abolishing the distinction between citizens and residents, extending the possibility of attaining citizenship to non-Christians... No wonder Buddenbrook's Trina came up with ideas like the one with the sofa and the silk dress ! Oh, worse was to come. Things threatened to take a dreadful turn... "Estate principle!" said some; also Johann Buddenbrook, the Consul, said so. "Universal suffrage!" said the others; Hinrich Hagenstrom said so too. Still others shouted, "General election of estates!" and perhaps they even knew what that meant. Then there were such ideas in the air as abolishing the distinction between citizens and residents, extending the possibility of attaining citizenship to non-Christians... No wonder Buddenbrook's Trina came up with ideas like the one with the sofa and the silk dress ! Oh, worse was to come. Things threatened to take a dreadful turn... "Estate principle!" said some; also Johann Buddenbrook, the Consul, said so. "Universal suffrage!" said the others; Hinrich Hagenstrom said so too. Still others shouted, "General election of estates!" and perhaps they even knew what that meant. Then there were such ideas in the air as abolishing the distinction between citizens and residents, extending the possibility of attaining citizenship to non-Christians... No wonder Buddenbrook's Trina came up with ideas like the one about the sofa and the silk dress ! Oh, worse was to come. Things threatened to take a dreadful turn... "General election of estates!" and perhaps they even knew what that meant. Then there were such ideas in the air as abolishing the distinction between citizens and residents, extending the possibility of attaining citizenship to non-Christians... No wonder Buddenbrook's Trina came up with ideas like the one with the sofa and the silk dress ! Oh, worse was to come. Things threatened to take a dreadful turn... "General election of estates!" and perhaps they even knew what that meant.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  We have moved now to our town house, an Italianate construction of Finnish granite, built by my grandfather circa 1885, with floral frescoes above the third (upper) story and a second-floor oriel, in St. Peterburg (now Leningrad), 47, Morskaya (now Hertzen Street). The children occupied the third floor. In 1908, the year selected here, I still shared a nursery with my brother. The bathroom assigned to Mademoiselle was at the end of a Z-shaped corridor some twenty heartbeats’ distance from my bed, and between dreading her premature return from the bathroom to her lighted bedroom next to our nursery and envying my brother’s regular little wheeze behind the japanned screen separating us, I could never really put my additional time to profit by deftly getting to sleep while a chink in the dark still bespoke a speck of myself in nothingness. At length they would come, those inexorable steps, plodding along the passage and causing some fragile glass object, which had been secretly sharing my vigil, to vibrate in dismay on its shelf. Now she has entered her room. A brisk interchange of light values tells me that the candle on her bed table takes over the job of the ceiling cluster of bulbs, which, having run up with a couple of clicks two additional steps of natural, and then supernatural, brightness, clicks off altogether. My line of light is still there, but it has grown old and wan, and flickers whenever Mademoiselle makes her bed creak by moving. For I still hear her. Now it is a silvery rustle spelling “Suchard”; now the trk-trk-trk of a fruit knife cutting the pages of La Revue des Deux Mondes. A period of decline has started: she is reading Bourget. Not one word of his will survive him. Doom is nigh. I am in acute distress, desperately trying to coax sleep, opening my eyes every few seconds to check the faded gleam, and imagining paradise as a place where a sleepless neighbor reads an endless book by the light of an eternal candle. The inevitable happens: the pince-nez case shuts with a snap, the review shuffles onto the marble of the bed table, and gustily Mademoiselle’s pursed lips blow; the first attempt fails, a groggy flame squirms and ducks; then comes a second lunge, and light collapses. In that pitchy blackness I lose my bearings, my bed seems to be slowly drifting, panic makes me sit up and stare; finally my dark-adapted eyes sift out, among entoptic floaters, certain more precious blurrings that roam in aimless amnesia until, half-remembering, they settle down as the dim folds of window curtains behind which street lights are remotely alive.

• From The Hours (1998)

  She panicked—she supposes “panic” is the word for it. She tried to lie down for a few minutes while her son was napping; she tried to read a little, but couldn’t concentrate. She lay on the bed with the book in her hands feeling emptied, exhausted, by the child, the cake, the kiss. It got down, somehow, to those three elements, and as she lay on the double bed with the shades drawn and the bedside lamp lit, trying to read, she wondered, Is this what it’s like to go crazy? She’d never imagined it like this—when she’d thought of someone (a woman like herself ) losing her mind, she’d imagined shrieks and wails, hallucinations; but at that moment it had seemed clear that there was another way, far quieter; a way that was numb and hopeless, flat, so much so that an emotion as strong as sorrow would have been a relief. And so she’s left for a few hours. She has not acted irresponsibly. She’s made sure her son is taken care of. She’s baked a new cake, thawed the steaks, topped the beans. Having done all that, she’s permitting herself to leave. She will be home in time to cook the dinner, to feed Kitty’s dog. But now, right now, she is going somewhere (where?) to be alone, to be free of her child, her house, the small party she will give tonight. She has taken her pocketbook, and her copy of Mrs. Dalloway. She has put on hose and a blouse and skirt; she has clipped her favorite earrings, simple copper disks, onto her ears. She feels faintly, foolishly satisfied by her outfit, and by the cleanliness of her car. A small dark-blue wastebasket, empty of trash, hugs the axle housing the way a saddle fits a horse. It’s ridiculous, she knows, and yet she finds consolation in this impeccable order. She is clean and well dressed, driving away. At home, the new cake waits under an aluminum cake-saver with a wooden knob shaped like an acorn. It is an improvement over the first cake. This cake has been frosted twice, so there are no crumbs caught in the icing (she has consulted a second cookbook, and learned that bakers refer to the first layer of icing as the “crumb layer,” and that a cake should always be iced a second time). This cake says “Happy Birthday Dan” in elegant white script, uncrowded by the clusters of yellow roses. It’s a fine cake, perfect in its way, and yet Laura is still disappointed in it. It still feels amateurish, homemade; it still seems somehow wrong. The “y” in “Happy” isn’t what she’d hoped it would be, and two of the roses are lopsided. She touches her lips, where Kitty’s kiss briefly resided. She doesn’t mind so much about the kiss, what it does and does not imply, except that it gives Kitty an edge.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  The movement is generally the closing of an electric key with the hand. The foot, the jaw, the lips, even the eyelid, have been in turn made organs of reaction, and the apparatus has been modified accordingly.[106] The time usually elapsing between stimulus and movement lies between one and three tenths of a second, varying according to circumstances which will be mentioned anon. The subject of experiment, whenever the reactions are short and regular, is in a state of extreme tension, and feels, when the signal comes, as if it started the reaction, by a sort of fatality, and as if no psychic process of perception or volition had a chance to intervene. The whole succession is so rapid that perception seems to be retrospective, and the time-order of events to be read off in memory rather than known at the moment. This at least is my own personal experience in the matter, and with it I find others to agree. The question is, What happens inside of us, either in brain or mind? and to answer that we must analyze just what processes the reaction involves. It is evident that some time is lost in each of the following stages: 1. The stimulus excites the peripheral sense-organ adequately for a current to pass into the sensory nerve; 2. The sensory nerve is traversed; 3. The transformation (or reflection) of the sensory into a motor current occurs in the centres; 4. The spinal cord and motor nerve are traversed; 5. The motor current excites the muscle to the contracting point. Time is also lost, of course, outside the muscle, in the joints, skin, etc., and between the parts of the apparatus; and when the stimulus which serves as signal is applied to the skin of the trunk or limbs, time is lost in the sensorial conduction through the spinal cord. The stage marked 3 is the only one that interests us here. The other stages answer to purely physiological processes, but stage 3 is psycho-physical; that is, it is a higher-central process, and has probably some sort of consciousness accompanying it. What sort? Wundt has little difficulty in deciding that it is consciousness of a quite elaborate kind. He distinguishes between two stages in the conscious reception of an impression, calling one perception , and the other apperception , and likening the one to the mere entrance of an object into the periphery of the field of vision, and the other to its coming to occupy the focus or point of view. Inattentive awareness of an object, and attention to it, are, it seems to me, equivalents for perception and apperception, as Wundt uses the words. To these two forms of awareness of the impression Wundt adds the conscious volition to react, gives to the trio the name of 'psycho-physical' processes, and assumes that they actually follow upon each other in the succession in which they have been named.[107] So at least I understand him.

• From The Hours (1998)

  “You too.” “Happy birthday.” “Thank you.” He stands. For a while they are all absorbed in the ritual of his leaving: the taking on of jacket and briefcase; the flurry of kisses; the waves, he from over his shoulder as he crosses the lawn to the driveway, Laura and Richie from behind the screen door. Their lawn, extravagantly watered, is a brilliant, almost unearthly green. Laura and Richie stand like spectators at a parade as the man pilots his ice-blue Chevrolet down the short driveway and into the street. He waves one last time, jauntily, from behind the wheel. “Well,” she says, after the car has disappeared. Her son watches her adoringly, expectantly. She is the animating principle, the life of the house. Its rooms are sometimes larger than they should be; they sometimes, suddenly, contain things he’s never seen before. He watches her, and waits. “Well, now,” she says. Here, then, is the daily transition. With her husband present, she is more nervous but less afraid. She knows how to act. Alone with Richie, she sometimes feels unmoored—he is so entirely, persuasively himself. He wants what he wants so avidly. He cries mysteriously, makes indecipherable demands, courts her, pleads with her, ignores her. He seems, almost always, to be waiting to see what she will do next. She knows, or at least suspects, that other mothers of small children must maintain a body of rules and, more to the point, an ongoing mother-self to guide them in negotiating the days spent alone with a child. When her husband is here, she can manage it. She can see him seeing her, and she knows almost instinctively how to treat the boy firmly and kindly, with an affectionate maternal off handedness that seems effortless. Alone with the child, though, she loses direction. She can’t always remember how a mother would act. “You need to finish your breakfast,” she says to him. “Okay,” he says. They return to the kitchen. Her husband has washed his coffee cup, dried it, put it away. The boy sets about eating with a certain tractorish steadiness that has more to do with obedience than appetite. Laura pours herself a fresh cup of coffee, sits at the table. She lights a cigarette. . . . the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June. She exhales a rich gray plume of smoke. She is so tired. She was up until after two, reading. She touches her belly—is it bad for the new baby, her getting so little sleep? She hasn’t asked the doctor about it; she’s afraid he’ll tell her to stop reading altogether. She promises that tonight she’ll read less. She’ll go to sleep by midnight, at the latest. She says to Richie, “Guess what we’re going to do today? We’re going to make a cake for your father’s birthday. Oh, what a big job we have ahead of us.”

• From The Hours (1998)

  She pulls up in front of Mrs. Latch’s house, where two painted plaster squirrels are attached to the gable over the garage. She gets out of her car and stands for a moment, looking up at the plaster squirrels, still holding her car keys. Beside her, the car emits a peculiar ticking sound (it’s been doing this for several days now, she’ll have to take it by the mechanic’s). She is overtaken by a sensation of unbeing. There is no other word for it. Standing beside her ticking car, facing Mrs. Latch’s garage (the plaster squirrels throw long shadows), she is no one; she is nothing. It seems, briefly, that by going to the hotel she has slipped out of her life, and this driveway, this garage, are utterly strange to her. She has been away. She has been thinking kindly, even longingly, of death. It comes to her here, in Mrs. Latch’s driveway—she has been thinking longingly of death. She has gone to a hotel in secret, the way she might go to meet a lover. She stands, holding her car keys and her purse, staring at Mrs. Latch’s garage. The door, painted white, has a little green-shuttered window in it, as if the garage were a miniature house attached to the larger house. Laura’s breathing is suddenly labored. She’s slightly dizzy—it seems she might stumble and collapse onto Mrs. Latch’s smooth concrete drive. She considers getting back into her car, and driving away again. She forces herself to go forward. She reminds herself: she has to retrieve her child, take him home, and finish assembling her husband’s birthday dinner. She has to do those ordinary things. With some effort, she draws a breath and goes up the walk to Mrs. Latch’s narrow front porch. It’s the secrecy, she tells herself; it’s the strangeness of what she’s just done, though there’s no real harm in it, is there? She’s not meeting a lover, like some wife from a cheap romance. She simply went away for a few hours, read her book, and came back. It’s a secret only because she can’t quite think how she’d explain, well, any of it—the kiss, the cake, the panicky moment when her car topped Chavez Ravine. She certainly doesn’t know how she’d explain two and a half hours spent reading in a rented room. She draws another breath. She rings Mrs. Latch’s rectangular, illuminated doorbell, which glows orange in the late-afternoon sun. Mrs. Latch opens the door almost immediately, as if she’d been standing right there, waiting. Mrs. Latch is florid, huge-hipped in Bermuda shorts, overly kind; her house is full of a rich brown smell, some sort of meat roasting, which unfurls from behind her when she opens the door. “Well, hello,” she says. “Hi,” Laura answers. “Sorry I’m late.” “Not at all. We’ve been having a fine time. Come on in.”

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  With the dainty lacquered key basket in one hand and the other lightly pushed into the side pocket of her dark red dressing gown, she seriously let the long, soft folds caress her, while the naive and ignorant expression of her mouth betrayed In the Pensee room she moved about with the little brass shower to soak the black soil of the leafy plants. She was very fond of her palm trees, which added so magnificently to the grandeur of the apartment. She carefully felt a young shoot on one of the thick, round shafts, tenderly examined the majestically unfolded fans and here and there removed a yellow tip with scissors... Suddenly she listened. The conversation in the smoking-room, which had been lively for several minutes, now grew so loud that every word was heard inside, although the door was strong and the portiere heavy. 'Don't scream! Moderate yourself, God in heaven!' was heard to call Herr Grünlich, whose soft voice couldn't stand the strain and therefore squeaked over and over again ... 'Have another cigar!' he then added with despairing gentleness. "Yes, with the greatest pleasure, thank you very much," replied the banker, which was followed by a pause during which Mr. Kesselmeyer helped himself. Then he said: "In short, do you want it or not, one of the two?" "Kesselmeyer, extend it!" »Ah? Well... hey, no , my dear, not at all, that's not what we're talking about at all..." "Why not? What is it about you? Be sensible, for heaven's sake! Have you waited so long…” "Not another day, my dear! Yes, let's say eight days, but not an hour longer! Does anyone still rely on…” "No name, Kesselmeyer!" “No name… fine. Does anyone still rely on your laudable Herr Schw…” “No designation…! Almighty God, don't be silly!' 'Fine, no designation! Does anyone still rely on the conscious company that your credit stands and falls with, dear? How much did she lose in the bankruptcy in Bremen? Fifty thousand? seventy thousand? hundred thousand? Even more? The sparrows on the roofs know that she was involved, enormously involved... It's a matter of mood. Yesterday was... nice, no name! Yesterday the company you knew was good and unconsciously protected you completely from distress... Today it's dull, and B. Grünlich is duller-most dull...isn't that clear? Don't you notice? You're the first to feel such fluctuations... How are you met? How are you looking at? Bock and Goudstikker are probably extremely courteous and trusting? How is the credit bank behaving?” "She's prolonging." »Ah? are you lying? I know she kicked you yesterday? A most, most encouraging kick?... Now look!... But don't be ashamed. It is of course in your best interest to make me believe that the others are still calm and secure … Well – hey, my dear! Write to the consul. I'll wait a week." "A down payment, Kesselmeyer!" »Deduction amount back and forth! Advance payments can be shot in order to convince oneself of someone's ability to pay!

• From The Hours (1998)

  “Here we go, then,” she says. He cautiously moves the cup to the other bowl and holds it there, paralyzed, over the bowl’s gleaming white concavity (it is the next smaller in a series of nesting bowls, pale green, with the same band of white leaves at its rim). He understands that he’s expected to dump the flour into the bowl but it seems possible that he’s misunderstood the directions, and will ruin everything; it seems possible that by spilling out the flour he will cause some larger catastrophe, upset some precarious balance. He wants to look at his mother’s face but can’t take his eyes off the cup. “Turn it over,” she says. He turns it over in one hurried, frightened motion. The flour hesitates for a fraction of a second, then spills out. The flour falls solidly, in a mound that loosely echoes the shape of the measuring cup. A bigger cloud rises, almost touches his face, then vanishes. He stares down at what he’s made: a white hill, slightly granular, speckled with pinpoint shadows, standing up from the glossy, creamier white of the bowl’s interior. “Oopsie,” his mother says. He looks at her in terror. His eyes fill with tears. Laura sighs. Why is he so delicate, so prone to fits of inexplicable remorse? Why does she have to be so careful with him? For a moment—a moment—Richie’s shape subtly changes. He becomes larger, brighter. His head expands. A dead-white glow seems, briefly, to surround him. For a moment she wants only to leave—not to harm him, she’d never do that—but to be free, blameless, unaccountable. “No, no,” Laura says. “It’s good. Very good. That’s just exactly right.” He smiles tearfully, suddenly proud of himself, almost insanely relieved. All right, then; nothing was needed but a few kind words, a bit of reassurance. She sighs. She gently touches his hair. “Now, then,” she says. “Are you ready to do another one?”

• From The Hours (1998)

  He nods solemnly. The weight and grain of life reassert themselves; the nowhere feeling vanishes. This moment, now, midblock, as the car approaches a stop sign, is unexpectedly large and still, serene—Laura enters it the way she might enter a church from a noisy street. On either side, sprinklers throw brilliant cones of mist up over the lawns. Late sun gilds an aluminum carport. It is unutterably real. She knows herself as a wife and mother, pregnant again, driving home, as veils of water are tossed up into the air. Richie doesn’t speak. He watches her. Laura brakes for the stop sign. She says, “It’s a good thing Daddy works as late as he does. We’ll put it all together in time, don’t you think so?” She glances at him. She meets his eyes, and sees something there she can’t quite recognize. His eyes, his entire face, seem lit from within; he appears, for the first time, to be suffering from an emotion she can’t read. “Honey,” she says, “what is it?” He says, louder than necessary, “Mommy, I love you.” There is something odd in his voice, something chilling. It is a tone she’s never heard from him before. He sounds frantic, foreign. He could be a refugee, someone with only rudimentary English, trying desperately to convey a need for which he has not learned the proper phrase. “I love you too, baby,” she replies, and although she’s said the words thousands of times, she can hear the flanneled nervousness lodged now in her throat, the effort she must make to sound natural. She accelerates through the intersection. She drives carefully, with both hands precisely centered on the wheel. It seems the boy will start crying again, as he does so often, so inexplicably, but his eyes remain bright and dry, unblinking. “What’s wrong?” she asks. He continues staring at her. He does not blink. He knows. He must know. The little boy can tell she’s been somewhere illicit; he can tell she’s lying. He watches her constantly, spends almost every waking hour in her presence. He’s seen her with Kitty. He’s watched her make a second cake, and bury the first one under other garbage in the can beside the garbage. He is devoted, entirely, to the observation and deciphering of her, because without her there is no world at all. Of course he would know when she’s lying. She says, “Don’t worry, honey. Everything’s fine. We’re going to have a wonderful party for Daddy’s birthday tonight. Do you know how happy he’ll be? We’ve got all these presents for him. We’ve made him such a nice cake.” Richie nods, unblinking. He rocks gently back and forth. Quietly, wishing to be overheard rather than heard, he says, “Yes, we’ve made him such a nice cake.” There is a surprisingly mature hollowness in his voice.

• From The Hours (1998)

  She knows Leonard can be gruff, stingy, and all but impossibly demanding. She knows these young people are often criticized unfairly but she will not side with them against him. She will not be the mother who intervenes, much as they beg her to with their eager smiles and wounded eyes. Ralph, after all, is Lytton’s worry, and Lytton is welcome to him. He, like his brothers or sisters to come, will go on and do whatever they do in the greater world—no one expects them to make a career out of assisting at the press. Leonard may be autocratic, he may be unfair, but he is her companion and caretaker, and she will not betray him, certainly not for handsome, callow Ralph, or Marjorie, with her parakeet’s voice. “There are ten errors in eight pages,” Leonard says. The brackets around his mouth are so deep you could slip a penny in. “Lucky to have found them,” Virginia says. “They seem to congregate around the middle section. Do you think bad writing actually attracts a higher incidence of misfortune?” “How I’d love to live in a world in which that were true. I’m going for a walk to clear my head, then I’ll come and pitch in.” “We’re making good progress,” Ralph says. “We should be through by the end of the day.” “We shall be lucky,” Leonard says, “to be through by this time next week.” He glowers; Ralph turns a finer and more precise shade of red. Of course, she thinks. Ralph set the type, and did it carelessly. The truth, she thinks, sits calmly and plumply, dressed in matronly gray, between these two men. It does not reside with Ralph, the young foot soldier, who appreciates literature but appreciates also, with equal or perhaps greater fervor, the brandy and biscuits waiting when the day’s work is done; who is good-hearted and unexceptional and can barely be counted on to perpetuate, in his allotted span, the ordinary business of the ordinary world. The truth likewise does not (alas) reside with Leonard, brilliant and indefatigable Leonard, who refuses to distinguish between setback and catastrophe; who worships accomplishment above all else and makes himself unbearable to others because he genuinely believes he can root out and reform every incidence of human fecklessness and mediocrity. “I’m sure,” she says, “that between us we can get the book into some sort of acceptable shape, and still have Christmas.” Ralph grins at her with a relief so visible she has an urge to slap him. He overestimates her sympathy—she has spoken not on his behalf but on Leonard’s, in much the way her own mother might have made light of a servant’s blunder during dinner, declaring for the sake of her husband and all others present that the shattered tureen portended nothing; that the circle of love and forbearance could not be broken; that all were safe. Mrs. Woolf She walks up Mt. Ararat Road, planning Clarissa Dalloway’s suicide.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  It was a wild burning and piercing pain, a malicious torment, which had taken hold of a diseased molar from the whole left side of the lower jaw. The inflammation pounded in it with red-hot little hammers and caused fever to rush to his face and tears to his eyes. The sleepless night had taken a terrible toll on his nerves. He had just had to pull himself together while speaking so his voice wouldn't break. In Mühlenstrasse he entered a house painted yellow-brown oil paint and climbed up to the first floor, where a brass plaque on the door read "Dentist Brecht." He didn't see the maid who opened the door for him. The corridor smelled warm of beefsteak and cauliflower. Then suddenly he breathed the pungent air of the waiting room into which he was being forced. "Have a seat . . . a momang!" cried an old woman's voice. It was Josephus who was sitting in his bare pawn at the back of the room and staring at him crookedly and maliciously with small, poisonous eyes. The senator sat down at the round table and tried to take in the jokes in a volume of Flying Papers, but then closed the book in disgust, pressed the cool silver of his cane to his cheek, closed his stinging eyes, and groaned. Everything was quiet all around, and only Josephus bit into the surrounding bars with a cracking and crunching sound. Herr Brecht owed it to himself, even when he wasn't busy, to keep us waiting for a while. Thomas Buddenbrook got up hastily and drank a glass of water from a carafe set up at a small table that smelled and tasted of chloroform. Then he opened the door to the corridor and called out with irritated intonation that, unless there was an urgent need to stop him, would Herr Brecht be so good as to hurry up a little. He's in pain. A moment later the graying moustache, hooked nose and bald forehead of the dentist appeared in the doorway to the operating room. "Please," he said. "Please!" also shouted Josephus. The senator accepted the invitation without laughing. A hard case! thought Herr Brecht and changed color ... They both walked quickly across the bright room to the large, adjustable chair with a headrest and green plush armrests that stood in front of one of the two windows. As he sat down, Thomas Buddenbrook briefly explained what it was about, tilted his head back and closed his eyes. Herr Brecht scraped the chair a little and then got to work on the tooth with a little mirror and a steel rod. His hand smelled of almond soap, his breath of beefsteak and cauliflower. "We must proceed to extraction," he said after a while, and hereditarily even more so. "Just walk," said the senator, closing his eyelids even tighter. Now there was a pause. Herr Brecht was preparing something on a barrier and was looking for instruments.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  "So far!" said Herr Ballerstedt and asked for the class register to certify with his signature that he was in charge of this hour of office. Hanno Buddenbrook closed his Bible and stretched, trembling and yawning nervously; but when he lowered his arms and tensed his limbs, he had to breathe quickly and laboriously in order to bring his heart, which for a moment weak and faltering, stopped working, a little. Now came the Latin ... He threw a sideways glance at Kai for help, who didn't seem to have noticed the end of the lesson and was still absorbed in his private reading, pulled the Ovid bound in marbled cardboard out of his portfolio and opened the verses, to be memorized for today... No, there was no hope, those black lines lined up, penciled, dead straight and numbered in fives, staring at him so hopelessly dark and unknown, to familiarize yourself a little. He could scarcely understand their meaning, let alone recite one of them off the top of his head. And he did not unravel a single sentence of those who followed suit and who had to be prepared for today. "What does 'deciderant, patula Jovis arbore, glandes' mean ?" he asked in a despairing voice to Adolf Todtenhaupt, who was working next to him in the class register. "That's all nonsense! Just to bully you..." "How?" said Todtenhaupt, continuing to write... "The acorns from the tree of Jupiter... That's the oak... Yes, I don't really know myself..." "Just tell me a little bit, Todtenhaupt, when it's up to me!" Hanno asked, pushing the book away from him. Then, after scowling at the Primus' heedless and noncommittal nod, he sidestepped out of the bench and stood. The situation had changed. Herr Ballerstedt had left the room and instead of him there was a small, weak and emaciated professor standing at the lectern, very straight and taut Male with a thin white beard, whose little red neck protruded from a narrow foldable collar, and who with one of his white-haired hands held his top hat out in front of him, opening upwards. The students called it "the spider" and it was actually called Professor Hückopp. Since he was in charge of the corridor during this break, he also had to check on things in the classrooms... "Turn off the lights! The curtains up! Open the windows!' it said, giving its little voice as much command as possible and waving its arm in the air with an awkwardly energetic gesture, as if it were turning a crank... 'And all down, out into the fresh air, a thousand times more!' The lamps went out, the curtains flew up, the faint daylight filled the room, and the cold misty air rushed in through the wide windows, while the lower-secondary students pushed past Professor Hückopp towards the exit; only the Primus was allowed to stay up here.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  What we benevolent ones - and, I believe, he himself - call his rough exterior has not made him very fond of... In short, mother, I suspect Arges. It would be bad for Erika if there was an accident, but it was Tony who hurt me the most. You see, she's right when she says that Hagenstrom took matters into his own hands with satisfaction. It concerns us all, and an ignominious outcome would affect us all, because Weinschenk belongs to the family and sits at our table. As for me, I'll get over it. I know how to behave. I have to be completely unfamiliar with the matter in public, I'm not allowed to attend the negotiations - although Breslauer would interest me - and I'm not allowed to worry about anything at all, if only to protect myself from accusations of any thirst for influence. But Tony? I can't imagine how sad a conviction would be for her. You have to hear her fear ring out in her loud protests against slander and envious intrigues … the fear that, after all the misery she endures, she will also lose this last, honorable position, the worthy household of her daughter. Oh, watch out, she'll keep protesting Weinschenk's innocence, the more she will be urged to doubt it... But he can also be innocent, of course, quite innocent... We must wait and see, mother, and treat him and Tony and Erika tactfully. But I don't foresee anything good..." * Under such circumstances, Christmas came this time, and little Johann, with the help of the tear-off calendar that Ida had made for him and on the last page of the calendar, followed a Christmas tree was marked, with a pounding heart, the approach of the incomparable time. The omens were multiplying... A life-size, colorful picture of Knecht Ruprecht had been hanging on the wall in Grandma's dining room since the first Advent. One morning Hanno found his bedspread, bed sheet and clothes strewn with crackling tinsel. Then, a few days later, in the afternoon in the living room, while Papa was lying on the chaise longue with the newspaper and Hanno was reading the poem about the witch at Endor in Gerok's »Palm Leaves«, an »old man« became, as every year and yet this time, quite surprisingly. reported, who "asked after the little one." He was invited in, that old man, and came shuffling in his steps, in a long fur coat, rough sides turned out, and trimmed with spangles of gold and snowflakes, matching cap, black features on his face, and an enormous white beard, which, like the preternaturally thick eyebrows, was interspersed with glittering tinsel. As every year, he declared in a brazen voice thatthis sack - on his left shoulder - for good children who could pray, contained apples and golden nuts, but that on the other hand this rod - on his right shoulder - was intended for the bad children... It was Knecht Ruprecht.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  He picked up his notebook and leafed through it in silence; but as the quiet in the class left much to be desired, he raised his head, stretched out his arm on the desk, and, while his face slowly swelled so dark red that his beard appeared bright yellow, he flexed his weak and white fist several times, feebly up and down, his lips working convulsively and fruitlessly for half a minute, finally uttering nothing but a short, tight, and groaning "Well , swelled and was satisfied. This was Ballerstedt's way. He had once wanted to be a preacher, but his tendency to stutter and his penchant for worldly well-being made him prefer to turn to education. He was a bachelor, had some fortune, wore a small diamond on his finger and was fond of food and drink. He was the senior teacher who only socialized with his peers on official business, but otherwise mainly with the unmarried commercial life of the city, even with the officers of the garrison, ate twice a day in the first inn and was a member of the "club". If it met larger students anywhere in town at two or three o'clock in the morning, it would swell, never asked from him. The head teacher had gotten together with his uncle Christian too often in a purely human way for him to be happy to get into official conflicts with his nephew... "Well..." he said again, looking around the class, flexing his weakly clenched fist with the small diamond again, and glancing at his notebook. »Perleman. The overview." Somewhere in the class, Perlemann stood up. One hardly noticed that he was climbing up. It was one of the small, advanced ones. "The overview," he said softly and politely, craning his head with an anxious smile. “The Book of Job is divided into three parts. First, the condition of Job before he came into the cross or chastisement of the Lord; Chapter I , verses one through six. Second, the cross itself and what happened there; Chapter …" "It was right, Perlemann," interrupted Herr Ballerstedt, touched by so much hesitant compliance, and wrote a good grade in his pocket book. "Heinricy, go on." Heinrich was one of those long rascals who didn't care about anything anymore. He shoved the handiest knife he had been working with into his trouser pocket, stood up noisily, let his lower lip droop and cleared his throat in a rough, raw man's voice. Everyone was dissatisfied that it was now his turn instead of the gentle Perlemann. The students dreamed and brooded in the warm room under the softly whizzing gas flames, half asleep. Everyone was tired from Sunday, and everyone had crawled out of their warm beds on the cold foggy morning, sighing and teeth chattering. Everyone would have liked it if little Perlemann had continued to whisper for the whole hour, while Heinricy would certainly start a fight now...

• From The Hours (1998)

  It would feel too illicit; it would feel too sordid. The desk clerk might even take her for some sort of professional; he might ask questions. Motels of that sort are outside her experience, they probably involve codes of conduct with which she’s utterly unfamiliar, and so she drives to the Normandy, a sprawling white building just a few blocks away. The Normandy is large, clean, unremarkable. It is V-shaped—twin white ten-story wings that enclose a fountained, urban garden. It has an air of sanitized respectability; it is intended for tourists and businessmen, people whose presence there contains not even the suggestion of mystery. Laura pulls her car up under a chrome canopy on which the hotel’s name stands in tall, angular chrome letters. Although it is full daylight, the air under the canopy has a slightly nocturnal quality, a lunar brilliance; a scoured white-on-white clarity. The potted aloe plants on either side of the black glass doors seem astonished to be there. Laura leaves her car with the attendant, receives her ticket for its redemption, and enters through the heavy glass doors. The lobby is hushed, gelid. A distant chime rings, clear and measured. Laura is at once comforted and unnerved. She walks across the deep blue carpet toward the front desk. This hotel, this lobby, is precisely what she wants—the cool nowhere of it, the immaculate non-smell, the brisk unemotional comings and goings. She feels, immediately, like a citizen of this place. It is so competent, so unconcerned. Still, at the same time, she’s here under false or, worse, inexplicable circumstances—she’s come, in some obscure way, to escape a cake. She intends to tell the desk clerk that her husband has been unavoidably delayed, and will arrive with their luggage in an hour or so. She has never lied like that before, not to someone she doesn’t know or love. The transaction at the front desk proves surprisingly easy. The clerk, a man about her own age, with a sweet, reedy voice and ravaged skin, clearly not only suspects nothing but does not entertain the possibility of suspicion. When Laura asks, “Have you got a room available?” he simply, unhesitatingly answers, “Yes, we do. Do you need a single or a double?” “A double,” she says. “For my husband and myself. He’s coming, with our luggage.” The clerk glances behind her, looking for a man struggling with suitcases. Laura’s face burns, but she does not waver. “He’s coming, actually, in an hour or two. He’s been delayed, and he sent me on. To see if there’s a vacancy.” She touches the black granite countertop to steady herself. Her story, it seems, is wholly implausible. If she and her husband are traveling, why do they have two cars? Why didn’t they phone ahead? The clerk, however, does not flinch. “I’m afraid I’ve only got rooms on the lower floors. Is that all right?” “Yes, it’s fine. It’s just for the one night.” “All right, then.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  Ani Difranco, in her song “32 Flavors,” says that she is a poster girl with no poster, she is 32 flavors and then some, and she is beyond our peripheral vision, so we might want to turn our heads, because some day we’re gonna get hungry and eat all of the words we just said. And just about everybody I know loves those lines because they speak of heaven and of hope and the idea that some day a King will come and dictate, through some mystical act of love, an existence in which everybody has to eat their own words because we won’t be allowed to judge each other on the surface of things anymore. And this fills me with hope. Jean-Paul Sartre said hell is other people. But that Indian speaker I really like named Ravi Zacharias says that heaven can be other people, too, and that we have the power to bring a little of heaven into the lives of others every day. I know this is true because I have felt it when Penny or Tony tells me I mean something to them and they love me. I pray often that God would give me the strength and dignity to receive their love. My friend Julie from Seattle says the key to everything rests in the ability to receive love, and what she says is right because my personal experience tells me so. I used to not be able to receive love at all, and to this day I have some problems, but it isn’t like it used to be. My eye would find things on television and in the media and somehow I would compare myself to them without really knowing I was doing it, and this really screwed me up because I never for a second felt I was worthy of anybody’s compliments. [image "9780785263708_0239_004" file=Image00090.jpg] I was dating this girl for a while, this cute writer from the South, and she was great, really the perfect girl, and we shared tastes on everything from music to movies, all the important stuff, and yet I could not really thrive in the relationship because I could never believe her deeply when she expressed affection. Our love was never a two-way conversation. I didn’t realize I was doing it, but I used to kick myself around quite a bit in my head, calling myself a loser and that sort of thing. There was nothing this girl could do to get through to me. She would explain her feelings, and I should have been happy with that, but I always needed more and then I resented the fact that I needed more because, well, it is such a needy thing to need more, and so I lived inside this conflict. I would sit on the porch at Graceland and watch cars go around the circle while all this stuff went around in my heart. There was no peace at all. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  But the misfortune consisted in the fact that through the action of some dark fate the whole thing came to light that Herr Stuht, wearing a black coat over a woolen shirt, had to appear in the consul's private office and Tom and Christian were subjected to a strict interrogation in his presence. Herr Stuht, who was standing beside the Consul's armchair with his legs apart but his head tilted to the side and a respectful attitude, made a melodious speech, saying that "that's what Saak is like" and that he would be happy to get the seventy mark to get it back, "because de Saak just went scheep." The Consul was furious at this prank. But after serious deliberation on his part, the result was that he increased his sons' allowance; for it was said: Lead us not into temptation. but with his head tilted to the side and in a respectful posture standing next to the Consul's armchair, he gave a melodious speech, saying that "that's what Saak is like" and that he would be glad to get the seventy marks back, "by de Saak yes now scheep gone«. The Consul was furious at this prank. But after serious deliberation on his part, the result was that he increased his sons' allowance; for it was said: Lead us not into temptation. but with his head tilted to the side and in a respectful posture standing next to the Consul's armchair, he gave a melodious speech, saying that "that's what Saak is like" and that he would be glad to get the seventy marks back, "by de Saak yes now scheep gone«. The Consul was furious at this prank. But after serious deliberation on his part, the result was that he increased his sons' allowance; for it was said: Lead us not into temptation. that he increased his sons' pocket money; for it was said: Lead us not into temptation. that he increased his sons' pocket money; for it was said: Lead us not into temptation. Apparently more hopes were placed on Thomas Buddenbrook than on his brother. His demeanor was even and of sensible vivacity; Christian on the other hand appeared capricious, tended towards silly comedy on the one hand and on the other hand could frighten the entire family in the strangest way... One sits at the table, one has arrived at the fruit and dines with comfortable conversations. Suddenly, however, Christian puts a bitten peach back on the plate, his face is pale and his round, deep-set eyes over his overly large nose have widened. "I'll never eat a peach again," he says. "Why not, Christian... What nonsense... What's the matter with you?" "Think of it, if I accidentally... swallowed that big kernel, and it got stuck in my throat... and I couldn't get any air...

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  oh, all too quietly, and that's only because I'm extremely go to work with caution. We haven't progressed, not significantly, since father was called away. Times are really not good for the merchant now... In short, there is not much joy in it. Our daughter is marriageable and able to make a match that will catch everyone's eye as advantageous and laudable - let her make it! Waiting is not advisable, not advisable, Bethsy! Talk to her again; I did my best to persuade her this afternoon..." – Tony was in a tight spot, the Consul was right about that. She didn't say "no" anymore, but she couldn't bring herself to say "yes" either - God help her! She herself didn't quite understand why she couldn't win the promise. In the meantime her father took her aside here and spoke a serious word, there her mother let her sit down to demand a final resolution … Uncle Gotthold and his family had not been let in on the matter because they were always a bit snarky that were tuned in Mengstraße. But even Sesemi Weichbrodt had found out about the matter and, with correct pronunciation, advised the good thing, even Mamsell Jungmann said: "Tonychen, my little child, don't worry, stay in the first circles..." and Tony couldn't leave the revered silk salon outside in front Visit the castle gates without old Madame Kröger beginning: " By the way , I've heard about an affair, I hope you'll see reason, little one..." One Sunday, when she was sitting with her parents and siblings in St. Mary's Church, Pastor Kölling spoke in strong terms about the text, which says that the woman should leave her father and mother and follow the man - and he suddenly became abusive. Tony stared up at him, horrified, wondering if he might even be looking at her... No, thank God, he turned his stout head the other way, preaching only generally to the devout crowd; and yet it was only too clear that this was a new attack on her, and that every word was meant for her. A young woman, still a child, he announced, that still have no will of their own and no insight of their own and yet oppose the loving advice of their parents, that is punishable, that the Lord wants to spit out of his mouth ... and with this turn of phrase, which was one of those that Pastor Kölling raved about and which he shared Despite the excitement, Tony got a piercing look from his eyes, accompanied by a horrible movement of the arm... Tony saw her father raise a hand beside her as if to say, “There! not too violently...' But there was no doubt that Pastor Kolling had obtained his or his mother's consent.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  4Belonging, as he did by choice, to the great classless intelligentsia of Russia, my father thought it right to have me attend a school that was distinguished by its democratic principles, its policy of nondiscrimination in matters of rank, race and creed, and its up-to-date educational methods. Apart from that, Tenishev School differed in nothing from any other school in time or space. As in all schools, the boys tolerated some teachers and loathed others, and, as in all schools, there was a constant interchange of obscene quips and erotic information. Being good at games, I would not have found the whole business too dismal if only my teachers had been less intent in trying to save my soul. They accused me of not conforming to my surroundings; of “showing off” (mainly by peppering my Russian papers with English and French terms, which came naturally to me); of refusing to touch the filthy wet towels in the washroom; of fighting with my knuckles instead of using the slaplike swing with the underside of the fist adopted by Russian scrappers. The headmaster who knew little about games, though greatly approving of their consociative virtues, was suspicious of my always keeping goal in soccer “instead of running about with the other players.” Another thing that provoked resentment was my driving to and from school in an automobile and not traveling by streetcar or horsecab as the other boys, good little democrats, did. With his face all screwed up in a grimace of disgust, one teacher suggested to me that the least I could do was to have the automobile stop two or three blocks away, so that my schoolmates might be spared the sight of a liveried chauffeur doffing his cap. It was as if the school were allowing me to carry about a dead rat by the tail with the understanding that I would not dangle it under people’s noses. The worst situation, however, arose from the fact that even then I was intensely averse to joining movements or associations of any kind. I enraged the kindest and most well-meaning among my teachers by declining to participate in extracurricular group work—debating societies with the solemn election of officers and the reading of reports on historical questions, and, in the higher grades, more ambitious gatherings for the discussion of current political events. The constant pressure upon me to belong to some group or other never broke my resistance but led to a state of tension that was hardly alleviated by everybody harping upon the example set by my father.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  EVERY YEAR OR SO I START PONDERING AT HOW silly the whole God thing is. Every Christian knows they will deal with doubt. And they will. But when it comes it seems so very real and frightening, as if your entire universe is going to fall apart. I remember a specific time when I was laying there in bed thinking about the absurdity of my belief. God. Who believes in God? It all seems so very silly. I felt as if believing in God was no more rational than having an imaginary friend. They have names for people who have imaginary friends, you know. They keep them in special hospitals. Maybe my faith in God was a form of insanity. Maybe I was losing my marbles. I start out believing in Christ, and the next thing you know I am having tea with the Easter Bunny or waltzing with my toaster, shouting, “The redcoats are coming!” And then I started thinking about other religions. I wasn’t seriously cheating on God or anything, I was just thinking about them. I read through the Koran before it was even popular. It never occurred to me that if Christianity was not rational, neither were other religions. There were times I wished I was a Buddhist, that is, I wished I could believe that stuff was true, even though I didn’t know exactly what a Buddhist believed. I wondered what it would be like to rub some fat guy’s belly and suddenly be overtaken with good thoughts and disciplined actions and a new car. I would go into real estate and marry a beautiful blond, and when the beautiful blond tilted her head to the side as I talked about socialized education, I could rub the Buddha, and she would have the intellect of Susan Faludi. Or Katie Couric. About the time I was thinking through some of this stuff, really letting my imagination go into creative answers about the meaning of the universe, I took the bus to Powells because one of my favorite authors was scheduled to read from his new book. Powells, I should tell you, is the largest bookstore in the world. New and used books. Cheap food, one of my friends says about it. Powells is one of the reasons I love Portland. The old down-town building houses more than a half million books, all of them smelling like dust and ink, two terrible smells that blend mystically to make something beautiful. Powells is another church to me, a paperback sort of heaven.