Watermelon hearts

One day I brunched on watermelon. The yellow variety is not common in Thailand so when I found some in the supermarket, I checked out a huge slice. And while I was at it, I looked around for mention of the fruit from different media; sources, origins, background. Guess my favorite would be no. 1. What's yours? If you know anything else about them, it would be lovely to hear that. 

 

1. "When one has tasted watermelon, he knows what the angels eat."  ~ Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson

2. It had just struck nine from the cuckoo clock that hung over the mantel-piece in the dining room, when Victorine brought in the halved watermelon and set it in front of Mr Bessemer's plate. ~ Frank Norris, Blix

3. That night Flora wanted to eat watermelon. ~ Dorit Rabinyan, Persian Brides

4. What shall we do? All of us passionate girls who fear crushing the boys we love with out mouths like caverns of teeth, our mushrooming brains, and watermelon hearts? ~ Francesca Lia Block, Blood Roses

5. There were happy days with watermelon and sad days of whiskey. ~ Lewis Nordan

6. The head is a clumsy, ill-proportioned monstrosity. It is the understudy in a watermelon-rolling contest. ~Bauvard, The Prince of Plungers

7. Her skin is pale as watermelon sucked free of its juices. ~ Jaclyn Moriarty, The Ghosts of Ashbury High

8. The deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar. ~ Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar

9. For me, Felleni was like a watermelon. It is there. A watermelon can not die. ~ Roberto Benigni

10. Most of my memories of Texas are of mosquitoes. Watermelons. Crickets. And my brother teasing me. ~ Robin Wright

11. Watermelon. It's a good fruit. You eat, you drink, you wash your face. ~ Enrico Caruso

12. Ivan had contrived somehow in the dark of night to replace every watermelon in the watermelon patch with a gravestone, and every gravestone in the engraver's lot with a watermelon. ~ Kristin Cashore, Bitterblue

13. A party without watermelon is just a meeting. ~ Julia Child (ed.)

Links: Favorite Things * Thursday Thirteen * Mellow Yellows

Tyranny of words

After The Wolf of Wall Street yesterday I had been subjected to enough expletives to fancy something I thought might have less or none of di Caprio's f******* screen awesomeness. Jordie is serving time while Charlie is spending time with his great grand kids.  I'll admit it: I'm a fan of the classics.

Here are 13 quotes from David Copperfield. I put together what I can relate with, like "there is Math in your future" (#1), my father who lived most of his life around #4,  when tempted to attempt too much multi-tasking (#5), my favorite vice (#6); favorite relaxant (#10) and so on. Does anything appeal to you?

Photo: Literature is my Utopia

1. “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.”

2.   “Trifles make the sum of life. ” 

3.  “We talk about the tyranny of words, but we like to tyrannize over them too; we are fond of having a large superfluous establishment of words to wait upon us on great occasions; we think it looks important, and sounds well. As we are not particular about the meaning of our liveries on state occasions, if they be but fine and numerous enough, so, the meaning or necessity of our words is a secondary consideration, if there be but a great parade of them. And as individuals get into trouble by making too great a show of liveries, or as slaves when they are too numerous rise against their masters, so I think I could mention a nation that has got into many great difficulties, and will get into many greater, from maintaining too large a retinue of words.” 

 4. “Least said, soonest mended”

 5. “I never could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time.”

6. “Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.”

7. “There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.” 

8. “We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down, Trot!” 

9. “But, tears were not the things to find their way to Mr. Bumble's soul; his heart was waterproof.” 

10. “I could settle down into a state of equable low spirits, and resign myself to coffee.”

11. “This was my only and my constant comfort. When I think of it, the picture always rises in my mind, of a summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for life.” 

12. “It's in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.”

13.  “Are tears the dewdrops of the heart?”

THURSDAY 13