You're Riding A Train At Night Across Some Vast Plain, And You Catch A Glimpse Of A Tiny Light In A Window

You're riding a train at night across some vast plain, and you catch a glimpse of a tiny light in a window of a farmhouse. In an instant it's sucked back into the darkness behind and vanishes. But if you close your eyes, that point of light stays with you, just barely, for a few moments.

Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami

The less I needed, the better I felt.

Charles Bukowski (via zuleikha)

The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live.

Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes

“And I know Fuck is a bad word, but it sounds so good. Good, like flipping off the preacher whenever he forgets that Eve was Adam’s teacher, ‘cause apples are fucking healthy you patriarchal piece of shit.”

Andrea Gibson (via lipstick-feminists)

Directions for preparing kidney soup, which is generally uncomplicated yet requires somewhat intricate knifework. 

Novel excerpt: The Midnight Cafe

The Midnight Cafe, established 1962, had been a Jacobin headquarters for the beaten down since the Beat Generation became a staple in that part of town. Over the years, it grew into a fully-earned reputation for revolution, for Marxists, feminists, transcendentalists, surrealists and hedonists alike had at one point considered the cafe a nightly destination for conspiring over whisky. In the 70s, while Tibetan refugees starved themselves on the sidewalk outside, Rastafarian guitarists serenaded passersby from the balcony seating. In the 80s, university students watched the fall of the Berlin Wall on TVs hanging above the bar and listened to radio reports of their Beijing counterparts being crushed by tanks. 

And in addition to the countless poets and lovers who met tragic ends overdosing, over-copulating in the bathroom, it was said that in his youth, a certain congressional lynchpin broke his heart against a chiseled queer on the dance floor before taking up the mantle of hardline conservatism in the 2012 presidential primaries. Michelin was decidedly reluctant to surrender to The Midnight Cafe even half a star, but for what it lacked in actual coffee or real food, a loyal clientele compensated with BYOB.  

No stranger to the establishment, Elia greeted the people she knew with hugs and kisses, quickly becoming acquainted with those she didn’t as she squeezed through an intimate throng of bodies. Talk was kept to a shallow minimum, as attempts to converse were frequently interjected by the clatter of plates, the clink of glasses and the whir of blenders churning out assembly line margaritas. Every last face in the place was beautiful, made so by makeup, by product, by dim lighting and clothes cut scandalously just so. Spirits were high and free-flowing; oxygen was low.