Solid emotion

The Married Man, Edmund White - so loaded with emotion and atmosphere that I think it was highly appropriate that I read it mostly in flights! Thanks to Arjun who gifted it, I dont think it's a book I would have picked up on my own.

There were a few strikingly effective lines in the book that I want to record -

"...Austin was incapable of picking out the talented tenth, the blessed exception, that nearly unique boy who admired accomplishment and experience more than an uncreased face and a tympanium-tight tummy"

"..Austin was so insecure in an affair - so eager to please, so intense in his devotion, so quick to accept the first sign of boredom as an irrevocable rejection - that in sacrilegious chatter he could assert, at least for a moment, his freedom."

"Austin felt less alive than he had in years. It was as if his pulses were racing while at the same time, his feelings had never been so dim, so nearly extinct. "

" 'I dont give a damn what other people think. I chose you, Petit, and after that there were no more choices to make' "

" 'You mean too much to me to judge you as either dull or interesting' "

"It was as if they had fused, as if Julien had been an alien who had snatched his body, encoded his nervous system and changed his blood type, colonized his organs and rescripted his memory bank"