Breakfast in Ulysses

• Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.
He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices
fried with crustcrumbs, fried hendcods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled
mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented
urine.
• Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting
her breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air were in the
kitchen but out of doors gentle summer morning everywhere. Made him
feel a bit peckish.
• The coals were reddening.
• Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. She didn't like her
plate full. Right. He turned from the tray, lifted the kettle off the hob and
set it sideways on the fire. It sat there, dull and squat, its spout stuck out.
Cup of tea soon. Good. Mouth dry. The cat walked stiffly round a leg of
the table with tail on high.
• - Mkgnao!
• - O, there you are, Mr Bloom said, turning from the fire.

Breakfast in Robinson Crusoe

• From the 14 of August to the 26th , incessant rain, so that I could not stir,
th

and was now very careful not to be much yet. In this confinement, I began
to be straitened for food: but venturing out twice, I one day killed a goat;
and the last day, which was the 26th , found a very large tortoise, which
was a treat to me, and my breakfast; a piece of the goat's flesh, or of the
turtle, for my dinner, broiled – for, to my great misfortune, I had no vessel
to boil or stew anything; and two or three of the turtle's eggs for my
supper.

Breakfast
• They were all hungry. The smell of bacon and eggs was very good. They
ran down the stairs and said good-morning to their aunt. She was just
bringing the breakfast to the table. Their uncle was sitting at the head,
reading his paper. He nodded at the childre. They sat down without a
word, wondering if they were allowed to speak at meals. They always
were at home, but their Uncle Quentin looked rather fierce.
 • It's almost relaxing to know I'll die fairly soon, as it's a comfort not to
obsess about my next orgasm. I've been ambitious, and ambition no
longer has plasn for the future-except these essays. My goal in life is
making it to the bathroom. In the past I was often advised to live in the
moment. Now what else can I do? Days are the same, generic and speedy-
I seem to remove my teeth shortly after I glue them in-and weeks are no
more tedious than lunch. They elapse and I scared notice. The only boring
measure is the seasons. Year after year they follow the same order. Why
don't they shake things up a “bit”? Start with summer, followed by spring,
winter, then maybe Thanksgiving?
• I've wanted to kill myslef only three times, each on account of a woman.
Two of them dumped me and the other died. Each time, daydreams of
suicide gave me comfort.
Donald Hall. Essays After Eighty.

• I remembered how for the three years after I lost her, even when I got up
in the dark to take a leak, she was all I thought about: even at four a.m.,
standing over the toilet seven- eights asleep, the Kepesh one-eighth
awake would begin to mutter her name. Generally when an old man
pisses at night, his mind is completely blank. If he's capable of thinking of
anything, it's only about getting back into bed. But not me, not then.
“Consuela, Consuela, Consuela,” every single time I got up to go. And
she'd done this to me, mind you, without language, without cogitation,
without cunning, without an ounce of malevolence, and with no regard to
cause and effect. Like a great athlete or a work of idealized sculptural art
or an animal glimpsed in the woods, like Michael Jordan, like a Maillol,
like an owl, like a bobcat, she'd done it through the simplicity of physical
splendor. There was nothing the least bit sadistic in Consuela. Not even
the sadism of indifference, which often goes with that magnitude of
perfection.
Richard Roth. The Dying Animal, 44.

If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim:
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Rudyard Kipling

The Ruined Castle

• In the very middle of it, on a low hill, rose the ruined castle. It had been
built of big white stones. Broke arch ways, tumbledown towers, ruined
walls- that was all that was left of a once beautiful castle, proud and
strong. Now the jackdaws nested in it and the gulls sat on the topmost
stones.