Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like jogging empty-handed after jogging with hand weights. What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative! Madeleine felt safe with a nineteenth century novel. There were going to be people in it. Something was going to happen to them in a place resembling the world. Then too there were lots of weddings in Wharton and Austen. There were all kinds of irresistible gloomy men. Jeffrey Eugenides
About This Quote

Madeleine Wharton, the author of The House of Mirth , said “Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like jogging empty-handed after jogging with hand weights. What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative! Madeleine felt safe with a nineteenth century novel. There were going to be people in it. Something was going to happen to them in a place resembling the world.

Then too there were lots of weddings in Wharton and Austen. There were all kinds of irresistible gloomy men.”

Source: The Marriage Plot

Some Similar Quotes
  1. A half-read book is a half-finished love affair. - David Mitchell
  2. The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  3. It starts so young, and I'm angry about that. The garbage we're taught. About love, about what's "romantic." Look at so many of the so-called romantic figures in books and movies. Do we ever stop and think how many of them would cause serious and... - Deb Caletti
  4. I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men."" Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes,... - Jane Austen
  5. Someone once wrote that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with you. - E. Lockhart
More Quotes By Jeffrey Eugenides
  1. A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims--these are lucky eventualites but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least...
  2. Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.
  3. In the end, it wasn't death that surprised her but the stubbornness of life.
  4. Yes, you need a passport to prove to the world that you exist. The people at passport control, they cannot look at you and see you are a person. No! They have to look at a little photograph of you. Then they believe you exist.
  5. It was amazing how it worked: the tiniest bit of truth made credible the greatest lies.
Related Topics