First Love and Other Sorrows
Harold Brodkey
My 6 highlights
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“I finished my paper on Donne,” Elgin said. Caroline laughed inconsequently, and Elgin laughed, too, for no good reason.
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She was still lovely then, still alight with the curious incandescence of physical beauty, and there was a man who had loved her for twenty years and who loved her yet and wanted to marry her.
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He was a precocious and delicate little boy, quivering with the malaise of being unloved.
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He looked bitterly at Martin. “If you tease me about my car, I’ll kill you.” “My God!” Martin exclaimed. “Everyone’s so fierce. What for? What does it get you?” “I don’t know,” Stu said. “It’s ego, I guess.” He sounded slightly ashamed of himself.
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She didn’t know how to sew, but she thought she did, and she sat on Elgin’s couch, smiling to herself, softly humming, and sewed buttons on wrong.
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Duncan helped me up, silently. We rode side by side, still drunk, but not as drunk as we had been.