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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| ab69d97 | Deploring other people--their lack of perfection--had always been our sport. | Jonathan Franzen | ||
| 1b6101a | Everything he did was at least partial and often total bullshit" (402)." | Jonathan Franzen | ||
| 5c39197 | compliments were like a beverage she was unconsciously smart enough to deny herself even one drop of, because her thirst for them was infinite. | Jonathan Franzen | ||
| 7d7c980 | Wow, thank you so much for the compliment!" Patty answered brightly, to end things. At the time, she believed that it was because she was so selflessly team-spirited that direct personal compliments made her so uncomfortable. The autobiographer now thinks that compliments were like a beverage she was unconsciously smart enough to deny herself even one drop of, because her thirst for them was infinite." | Jonathan Franzen | ||
| 00355ff | It was true that Al had asked her to move the jars and magazines, and there was probably a word for the way she'd stepped around those jars and magazines for the last eleven days, often nearly stumbling on them; maybe a psychiatric word with many syllables or maybe a simple word like "spite." But it seemed to her that he'd asked her to do more than "one thing" while he was gone. He'd also asked her to make the boys three meals a day, and cl.. | Jonathan Franzen | ||
| fd72071 | That was the way most people were - stupid. | Jonathan Franzen | ||
| 19347f2 | She pondered the arrangements of the paintings on a wall like a writer pondered commas. | mother | Jonathan Franzen | |
| 70e0ede | He felt like a helium balloon straining skyward on a slender string. | Jonathan Franzen | ||
| 6dd9495 | She has embarrassingly inquired, of her children, whether there's a woman in his life, and has rejoiced at hearing no. Not because she doesn't want him to be happy, not because she has any right or even much inclination to be jealous anymore, but because it means there's some shadow of a chance that he still thinks, as she does more than ever, that they were not just the worst thing that ever happened to each other, they were also the best .. | Jonathan Franzen | ||
| a05f849 | Don't talk to me about hatred if you haven't been married. Only love, only long empathy and identification and compassion, can root another person in your heart so deeply that there's no escaping your hatred of her, not ever; especially not when the thing you hate most about her is her capacity to be hurt by you. The love persists and the hatred with it. | Jonathan Franzen | ||
| 1897b14 | There's a hazardous sadness to the first sounds of someone else's work in the morning; it's as if stillness experiences pain in being broken. The first minute of the workday reminds you of all the other minutes that a day consists of, and it's never a good thing to think of minutes as individuals. Only after other minutes have joined the naked, lonely first minute does the day become more safely integrated into dayness. | Jonathan Franzen | ||
| 93c5e0a | I'm starting to think paradise isn't eternal contentment. It's more like there's something eternal about feeling contented. There's no such thing as eternal life, because you're never going to outrun time, but you can still escape time if you're contented, because then time doesn't matter. | happiness meditation | Jonathan Franzen | |
| 8987143 | Why the conservatives, who controlled all three branches of the federal government, were still so enraged--at respectful skeptics of the Iraq War, at gay couples who wanted to get married, at bland Al Gore and cautious Hillary Clinton, at endangered species and their advocates, at taxes and gas prices that were among the lowest of any industrialized nation, at a mainstream media whose corporate owners were themselves conservatives, at the M.. | Jonathan Franzen | ||
| b9949d5 | The basic intention in any caring, physical or psychological, is to alleviate suffering. But in relation to the symptom itself, observance means first of all listening and looking carefully at what is being revealed in the suffering. An intent to heal can get in the way of seeing. | Thomas Moore | ||
| 30b198d | One effective "trick" in caring for the soul is to look with special attention and openness at what the individual rejects, and then to speak favorably for that rejected element." | Thomas Moore | ||
| 822b2b8 | For the soul, depression is an initiation, a rite of passage. If we think that depression, so empty and dull, is void of imagination, we may overlook its initiatory aspects. We may be imagining imagination itself from a point of view foreign to Saturn; emptiness can be rife with feeling-tone, images of catharsis, and emotions of regret and loss. As a shade of mood, gray can be as interesting and as variegated as it is in black-and-white pho.. | Thomas Moore | ||
| f4e9616 | I feel like one Who treads alone Some banquet-hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, | Thomas Moore | ||
| c939f49 | that's what fantasies are for: they allow you to skip the degradation and head straight to the top. | David Sedaris | ||
| c74a483 | I attributed their behavior to the fact that they didn't have a TV, but television didn't teach you everything. Asking for candy on Halloween was called trick-or-treating, but asking for candy on November first was called begging, and it made people uncomfortable. This was one of the things you were supposed to learn simply by being alive, and it angered me that the Tomkeys did not understand it. | humour | David Sedaris | |
| 5dddb62 | A few years later, in the midst of a brief academic setback, she trained him to act as her emotional cheerleader. I'd call and hear him in the background, screaming, "We love you, Lisa!" and "You can do it!" | David Sedaris | ||
| d485661 | The fake slap invariably makes contact, adding the elements of shock and betrayal to what had previously been plain old-fashioned fear. | David Sedaris | ||
| 6f28022 | You'd have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to know what you're getting yourself into, so if there's blame, blame yourself. | David Sedaris | ||
| 0deac97 | After that there was nothing left to say as nothing gets on my nerves more than someone repeating the same phrase twice. I think it's something people have picked up from television, this emotional stutter. Rather than say something interesting once, they repeat a cliche and hope for the same effect | David Sedaris | ||
| 6a4e829 | You have what we in France call 'good time teeth,'" she said. "Why on earth would you want to change them?" "Um, because I can floss with the sash to my bathrobe?" | David Sedaris | ||
| 71c33a2 | Then he reached to an even higher shelf and brought down another plastic grocery bag, this one from Tesco, which is decidedly less upscale. "Now, a smell is going to hit you when I open this up, but don't worry," he said. "It's just the smoke they used to preserve the head." That's a phrase you don't hear too often, so it took a moment for it to sink in." | David Sedaris | ||
| 22df7c9 | The iPhone 2 led to the 3, but I didn't get the 4 or 5 because I'm holding out for the 7, which, I've heard on good authority, can also be used as a Taser. This will mean I'll have just one less thing to carry around. | David Sedaris | ||
| 882bcb1 | True art was based upon despair, and the important thing was to make yourself and those around you as miserable as possible. | David Sedaris | ||
| 96ab2e9 | The thought of killing myself had slowed me down to five miles per hour. The thought of killing someone else stopped me completely. | memoir naked sedaris | David Sedaris | |
| 6c4e5df | the beauty of an art school: as long as you can pay the tuition, they will never, even in the gentlest way, suggest that you have no talent. | David Sedaris | ||
| 3c686eb | The woman had decided that I was a hard-ass, one of those guys who refuse under any circumstances to do anyone a favor. But it's not true. I just prefer that the favor be idea, and that it leaves me feeling kind rather than bullied and uncomfortable. | David Sedaris | ||
| 14bfd9f | What's wrong?" he said. "I'll tell you what's wrong: you're killing us." "But I thought that's what you wanted?" | David Sedaris | ||
| ee4e4b3 | One afternoon while driving back from the beach, Hugh pointed out a McDonald's bag vomiting its contents onto the pavement. "I say that any company whose products are found on the ground automatically has to go out of business," he said. This is how we talk nowadays, as if our pronouncements hold actual weight and can be implemented at our discretion, like we're kings or warlocks. "That means no more McDonald's, no more Coke - none of it." .. | David Sedaris | ||
| 1b45980 | Everyone in America is extremely concerned with hydration. Go more than five minutes without drinking, and you'll surely be discovered behind a potted plant, dried out like some escaped hermit crab. When I was young no one would think to bring a bottle of water into a classroom. I don't think they even sold bottled water. We survived shopping trips without it, and funerals. Now, though, you see people with those barrels that Saint Bernards .. | David Sedaris | ||
| 7d46d31 | in other words, his story was part boast, part confession. | Ben Mezrich | ||
| 89d24c8 | To guys like Mark, time was another weapon of the establishment, like alphabetical order. The great engineers, hackers - they didn't function under the same time constraints as everyone else. | Ben Mezrich | ||
| feeb62f | 1:52 a.m. His favorite nightcap--coffee and Benzedrine. | James Ellroy | ||
| 5203cb9 | Merchant: 'So you have lived on the possessions of others?' Saddhartha: 'Apparently. The merchant also lives on the possession of others.' Merchant: 'Well spoken... | hermann-hesse saddhartha | Hermann Hesse | |
| b453d93 | lftr@ l'khyr@ mn kl mrHl@ mn mrHl lHy@ tHml lwn khfyf mn ldhbwl w lrGb@ fy lmwt dhth yqwdh ly mkn jdyd,ly lyqZ@,ly bdy@ jdyd@ | Hermann Hesse | ||
| ac18177 | Searching means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal. | Hermann Hesse | ||
| ca87f59 | He brooded on how close destruction always was to all creatures, animals as well as humans, and he realized that there is nothing we can predict or know for certain in this world except death. | death life wisdom | Hermann Hesse | |
| 3bc87fe | In the shade of the house, in the sunshine of the riverbank near the boats, in the shade of the Sal-wood forest, in the shade of the fig tree is where Siddhartha grew up, the handsome son of the Brahman, the young falcon, together with his friend Govinda, son of a Brahman. The sun tanned his light shoulders by the banks of the river when bathing, performing the sacred ablutions, the sacred offerings. In the mango grove, shade poured into hi.. | Hermann Hesse | ||
| c744b38 | On a strange and devious way, Siddhartha had gotten into this final and most base of all dependencies, by means of the game of dice. It was since that time, when he had stopped being a Samana in his heart, that Siddhartha began to play the game for money and precious things, which he at other times only joined with a smile and casually as a custom of the childlike people, with an increasing rage and passion. He was a feared gambler, few dar.. | wealth | Hermann Hesse | |
| 6fd423b | The human attitude of which classical music is the expression is always the same; it is always based on the same kind of insight into life and strives for the same kind of victory over blind chance. Classical music as gesture signifies knowledge of the tragedy of the human condition, affirmation of human destiny, courage, cheerful serenity. | human-condition insights music | Hermann Hesse | |
| fd67ac8 | he saw and recognised the visible and he sought his place in this world. He did not seek reality; his goal was not on any other side. The world was beautiful when looked at in this way - without any seeking, so simple, so childlike. The moon and stars were beautiful, the brook, the shore, the forest and rock, the goat and the golden beetle, the flower and butterfly were beautiful. It was beautiful and pleasant to go through the world like t.. | stoicism | Hermann Hesse |