Citat ur Palimpsest

Har börjat läsa Palimpsest av Catherynne M Valente. Den handlar om den drömska sagostaden Palimpsest - en gåtfull, märklig plats som ger underbara Spirited Away-vibbar - dit man bara kan komma genom att älska med någon som varit där. Och den är skriven på väldigt vackert språk. Helst skulle jag vilja citera alltihop, men nöjer mig med två exempel:

Oleg är låssmed; allt i hans lägenhet är "locked away, safer than treasure, safer than a heart."

Keys did not really fascinate him, though he collected them as well, matching them carefully, not to the lock that was made for them, modern to modern, brass to brass, keycard to slot, as a common locksmith might, but to the ones he felt they yearned for, deep in their pressed metal hearts. He possessed a rusted iron key with an ornate lion's grimace at its head, slung alongside a gleaming hotel's card-slot lock, its red and green lights dead. He had laid an everyday steel housekey against the rarest of locks, real gold, with lilies raised up on its surface, a complex system of bolts and tumblers concealed within. Only Oleg had heard their cries for each other. Only Oleg knew their silent grief that they could not join.

Och det här får t o m mig att längta efter kaffe ("she" är biodlaren November):

She often felt that she chased the ideal cup of coffee in her mind from table to table, the rich, thick, creamy coffee, spicy, bittersweet, that betrayed no hint of thinness or chemical flavoring, nothing less than total, fathomless devotion to the state of being itself. Every morning she pulled a delicate cup from its brass hook and filled it, hoping that it would be dark and deep and secret as a forest, and each morning it cooled too fast, had too much milk, stained the cup, made her nervous.