[오늘의 한문장] Small Things Like These : Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2022

‘Where does thinking get us?‘ she said. ‘All thinking does is bring you down.‘ She was touching the little pearly buttons on her nightdress, agitated. ‘If you want to get on in life, there‘s things you have to ignore, so you can keep on.‘ - P45

[오늘의 한문장] 삶의 발명

니코스 카잔차키스는 모넴바시아 여행기를 이런 문장으로 마무리한다.
폐허에서 여행자는 희망 없는 투쟁에 기꺼이 뛰어드는 영혼을 본다. 아무런 보상을 기대하지 않고 치열한 투쟁 그 자체에서 즐거움을 느끼는 영혼을 보는 것이다. 그 영혼은 승부를 떠나서 마치 게임을 하듯 그 투쟁에 몰두하기 때문에 즐거움을 느낀다. 그리하여 내 영혼은 이렇게 맹세한다. 다시는 내 마음에 인생의 환락, 도취, 근심으로 부담 주지 않으리라. 나는 허공에 튀어 오르는 불꽃같은 상태로 내 영혼을 보존하리라.
- <삶의 발명>, 정혜윤 - 밀리의 서재
https://www.millie.co.kr/v3/bookDetail/179628157 - P172

Eileen said, after a while. ‘...

Eileen said, after a while. ‘We must be doing something right.‘
‘Tis mostly your doing, ‘Furlong admitted. "Where am I ever only away all day then home to the table and up to bed and gone again before they rise.‘
‘You‘re all right, Bill,‘ Eileen said. ‘We‘ve not a penny owing, and that‘s down to you.‘ - P28

It took a while to go over everything and to decide, between them, what should and should not be bought.
In the end, they stretched it out to as much as they could afford:
a pair of jeans for Kathleen, who‘d been watching the ad for 501s on television;
a Queen album for Joan, who‘d glued herself to the Live Aid concert that summer and had fallen in love with Freddie Mercury.
Sheila had written the shortest letter, asking plainly for Scrabble, providing no alternative.
They decided on a spinning globe of the world for Grace, who wasn‘t sure what she wanted but had written out a long list.
Loretta was not in two minds: if Santa would pleese bring Enid Blyton‘s Five Go Down to the Sea or Five Run Away Together or both, she was going to leave a big slice of cake out for him and hide another behind the television. - P29

‘A Walter Macken, maybe. Or David Copperfield. I never did get round to reading that one.‘
‘Right you are.‘
‘Or a big dictionary, for the house, for the girls.‘
He liked the thought of having a dictionary in the house.
‘Is there something on your mind, Bill?‘ Her finger slid over the top of the glass, circling it. You were miles away this night.‘
Furlong looked away, feeling her instincts at work again, the hot power of her gaze. - P31

Adolf Eichmann went to the ga...

Adolf Eichmann went to the gallows with great dignity. He had asked for a bottle of red wine and had drunk half of it.
He refused the help of the Protestant minister, the Reverend William Hull, who offered to read the Bible with him: he had only two more hours to live, and therefore no "time to waste."
He walked the fifty yards from his cell to the execution chamber calm and erect, with his hands bound behind him. When the guards tied his ankles and knees, he asked them to loosen the bonds so that he could stand straight. "I don‘t need that," he said when the black hood was offered him. He was in complete command of himself, nay, he was more: he was completely himself. Nothing could have demonstrated this more convincingly than the grotesque silliness of his last words. He began by stating emphatically that he was a Gottgläubiger, to expressin common Nazi fashion that he was no Christian and did not believe in life after death. He then proceeded: "After a short while, gentlemen, we shall all meet again. Such is the fate of all men. Long live Germany, long live Argentina, long live Austria. I shall not forget them." In the face of death, he had found the cliché used in funeral oratory. Under the gallows, his memory played him the last trick; he was "elated" and he forgot that this was his own funeral.
It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us-the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil. - P252

Always it was the same, Furlo...

Always it was the same, Furlong thought;
always they carried mechanically on without pause, to the next job at hand.
What would life be like, he wondered, if they were given time to think and reflect over things?
Might their lives be different or much the same - or would they just lose the run of themselves?
Even while he‘d been creaming the butter and sugar, his mind was not so much upon the here and now and on this Sunday nearing Christmas with his wife and daughters so much as on tomorrow and who owed what, and how and when he‘d deliver what was ordered and what man he‘d leave to which task, and how and where he‘d collect what was owed - and before tomorrow was coming to an end, he knew his mind would already be working in much the same way, yet again, over the day that was to follow. - P19

Before long, he caught a hold of himself and concluded that nothing ever did happen again; to each was given days and chances which wouldn‘t come back around. And wasn‘t it sweet to be where you were and let it remind you of the past for once,
despite the upset, instead of always looking on into the mechanics of the days and the trouble ahead,
which might never come. - P25