Deborah Meyler: Mixed Treats

A classmate at Concordia once told me that the measure of a really good book is that it's good on every page. I find that to be absolutely true. I can open Deborah Meyler's The Bookstore on any page and unearth a jewel.

Ready? Here we go:

"If I rang out the bells to celebrate, would they sound dully, would they ring true? My mouth is full of champagne. I hold it there for a second or two. It is expensive and yeasty and tart. It is glorious. I won't be allowed any more for months on end. I think of swans singing before they die, of butterflies with cornflower-blue wings living for a day, and then I swallow." - p. 143

"You are young. You have everything ahead of you. When you have lived so long as I have, seen so much as I have seen, the savor goes out of your life. Perhaps it is best, so we do not cling on. You have chlamydia, but treatment is simple." - p. 105

"I am not going to put up with the lipstick-mouth toilet seat any longer." - p. 232

"Cameras are receptive - they are just holes that let in light. But because men use them more than women, we get different words, words that don't really go with what happens. Imagine if men went around saying, 'Hey, I'm just going to grab my camera because I want to receive some photos.'" - p. 51

"She is looking from me to Luke. A false light dawns.
"Oh! You are the father!" she says to Luke. She strikes her knee with her palm, in exasperation that she didn't see this before."
"No, ma'am, I am not," answers Luke. He injects profound thankfulness into his voice.The old lady shakes her head.
"I thought you were kind of a good fit."
"But thank you, Luke," I say. "That was very courteous of you." - p. 182

"All the errant 'I love you's in the world don't have such an effect, they don't spark bonfires, either of tragic or magnificent dimensions. The spark they send out into the world whistles on a brick and dies." - p. 298

"Maybe the daydreams of ravishings on the sofa are hormonally induced. After all, in my present state, even Thiebaud's paintings of hot dogs have an undesirable effect." - p. 97

"That thing that Hamlet says - there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Not quite true if you're stuck under a grand piano, not quite true for genocide, but surely it must be true about love." - p. 89

Somebody give this lady an award.