母亲毫不犹豫地从书和报刊中剪下自己钟爱的文字,大大方方地贴满整个厨房的墙壁;可是面对自己的女儿,她却从未说将“我爱你”三个字说出口……
When I read a book from my mother’s shelves, it’s not unusual to come across a gap[2] in the text. A paragraph, or maybe just a sentence, has been sliced out, leaving a window in its place, with words from the next page peeping through.[3] The chopped up page looks like a nearly complete jigsaw puzzle waiting for its missing piece.[4] But the piece isn’t lost, and I always know where to find it. Dozens of quotations, clipped from newspapers, magazines—and books—plaster one wall of my mother’s kitchen.[5] What means the most to my mother in her books she excises[6] and displays.
I’ve never told her, but those literary amputations appall me.[7] She picks extracts that startle me, too: “Put your worst foot forward, because then if people can still stand you, you can be yourself.” Sometimes I stand reading the wall of quotations, holding a scissors-victim novel[8] in my hand, puzzling over what draws my mother to these particular words.
My own quotation collection is more hidden and delicate. I copy favorite lines into a spiral-bound journal[9] —a Christmas present from my mother, actually—in soft, gray No. 2 pencil. This means my books remain whole. The labor required makes selection a cutthroat process: Do I really love these two pages of On Chesil Beachenough to transcribe them, word by finger-cramping word? (The answer was yes, the pages were that exquisite.)[10]
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