THROWBACK THURSDAY :: Sara Gran

This week in the word nerd notebooks we're heading back to 2011 and Sara Gran's infinitely quotable Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead. A few of my favorite passages:

• Happiness is the temporary result of denying the knowledge one already has...
• "In this book," I went on, as if we both weren't crying, "this guy, he says, 'Be grateful for every scar life inflicts on you.' He says, 'Where we're unhurt is where we are false. Where we're wounded and healed is where our real self gets to show itself.' That's where you get to show who you are."
• Houses are like people, only less annoying.
• Quicksand is a dangerous place to be. We will drown there if we can't get out. But it tricks us. It tricks us into confusing it with safety. At first, it may seem like a solid place to stay. But slowly we're sinking. You will never move forward. Never move back. In quicksand you will slowly sink until you drown. The deeper you let yourself sink, the harder it is to claw yourself out.
• Most people who've been abused as children never hurt a fly. But of all the people who hurt flies, almost all of them have had their wings broken themselves.

THROWBACK THURSDAY :: Dennis Tafoya

Dennis Tafoya writes some cracking good crime fiction, and this week's word nerd notebook Throwback Thursday passage comes from 2010's The Wolves of Fairmount Park:

• It was insane, she guessed, but it was in her mind that they should have had more kids, she and Brendan. That having one child had been a mistake. That to have one child was a kind of bet with God about the goodness of the world, a hope too fragile to hang so much happiness on.

That's some good stuff right there.

THROWBACK THURSDAY :: Cormac McCarthy

We're heading back to 2006 in the word nerd notebooks today. The following passage is from Cormac McCarthy's The Road:

*  *  *

Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that. You forget some things, don't you? Yes. You forget what you want to remember and remember what you want to forget.

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THROWBACK THURSDAY :: Lisa O'Donnell

The oldest word nerd notebook is at the office and I'm not, so we're taking just a little hop back to 2013 for this week's installment. Way back in 2013, my friend Pop Culture Nerd raved about Lisa O'Donnell's The Death of Bees, and boy was she right on (it was her selection for the January 2013 edition of the Nerdy Special List). The cover of this one would have won me over even without the recommendation from a friend. Stunning work.

Indiebound says: "Written with fierce sympathy and beautiful precision, told in alternating voices, The Death of Bees is an enchanting, grimly comic tale of three lost souls who, unable to answer for themselves, can answer only for one another."

The following is one of my favorite passages. Short, but cutting:

• I'm never getting a tattoo. My secrets are etched safely on the inside and I intend to keep them there.

THROWBACK THURSDAY :: Andrew Vachss

Today we're throwing back to 1990 in the word nerd notebooks. Andrew Vachss is not only an author, but a child protection consultant and attorney working exclusively for children and youths. It's therefore no surprise that his Burke series deals with some pretty harrowing issues. Burke himself is a career criminal who is the product of child abuse, foster homes, and prison. The series can be dark, very dark, but even within the dark, Vachss paints faint (very, very faint) streaks of light, both through Burke and the unique cast of characters who surround him. The few he has chosen to be his family.

The following excerpts are from Blossom, the fifth in the Burke series:

• I was born sad - I don't remember another time. Sadness was never my friend, never coming to me like those electric fear-jolts when I needed them. It was just always there. Ground fog on my spirit. I'd go deep into myself, the only safe place I knew in the places where I grew up. Dropping so far down nobody could see me. But the sadness would float on gray tendrils too soft to tear, finding its way between the cracks. I'd feel its misty wet weight settle on me. I could never chase it, so I lived in it.

• If there's a God, someone needs to sue him for malpractice.

THROWBACK THURSDAY :: Lawrence Block

For this week's Throwback Thursday we head back in the notebook more than a decade to Lawrence Block's Small Town. Sadly, I have not, in the ten plus years since I first read this passage, been able to think of my irritations as future pearls. Maybe they just need more time:

"The by-product of the oyster's relief was the shimmering beauty of the pearl. And every pearl, every single luminous gem, had at the core of its being a grain of irritation."

If you haven't read Lawrence Block, by all means get started on that. His Matt Scudder series has been one of the best in crime fiction for almost forty years. I also recommend the Keller and Bernie Rhodenbarr series, and he writes fantastic short fiction. Hell, just go try it all. You can find out more about him at lawrenceblock.com or @LawrenceBlock.

THROWBACK THURSDAY :: Leif Enger

I am such a book/word nerd I actually have been keeping notebooks the past few years with my favorite passages from whatever I happen to be reading.  Sometimes there are many, sometimes few, often none. If I like the passage, it goes in the notebook whether I ended up liking the book or not. I was recently wondering what the hell I was going to do with these notebooks of gold. I'm still alive, thus the Smithsonian hasn't called yet. So I figured I would share each week for Throwback Thursday.

First up is Leif Enger's So Brave, Young, and Handsome. I adore Enger's work and this one was no exception.  Below are a few of my favorite entries:

He talked and he laughed; he talked himself hoarse; he talked like a former mute distrustful of the cure.

In times of dread it's good to have an old man along. An old man has seen worse.

Sometimes heroism is nothing more than patience, curiosity, and a refusal to panic.

This week, I recommend the book wholeheartedly. Enger is a beautiful writer.