“Take the sailor," he said. "he signs on to a new ship. He's surrounded by nothing but strangers. Not only do they come from other towns and parts of his own country, but often from completely different nations. He has to learn to work with them. His vocabulary's broadened, he learns new words and grammar, and he comes across new ways of thinking. he turns into a different man, unlike the one who spends his life plowing the same old furrow. These are the men the world needs, not nationalists and warmongers.”
― We, the Drowned
― We, the Drowned
“Nature was neither fair nor unfair. Those terms belonged to the world of men.”
― We, the Drowned
― We, the Drowned
“You will not be punished for those beliefs in our nation of individual freedoms. But I do think the vast majority of your fellow Americans would appreciate it, kind creationists, if you silly motherfuckers would keep that bullshit out of our schools. Your preferred fairy tales have no place in a children’s classroom or textbook that professes to be teaching our youngsters what is REAL. Jesus Christ, it’s irrefutably un-American, people!”
― Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Principles for Delicious Living
― Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Principles for Delicious Living
“Of course, my fundamentals may not work for everyone. A beautiful aspect of the human race is our endless variety. Like maple leaves and snowflakes, there are no two of us alike.”
― Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Principles for Delicious Living
― Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Principles for Delicious Living
“This is the lone-American type I admire, the kind I believe in, can get along with, and whom I vote for even though he’s never nominated for office. The democratic man our poets sang of but who, alas, is being rapidly exterminated, along with the buffalo, the moose and the elk, the great bear, the eagle, the condor, the mountain lion. The sort of American that never starts a war, never raises a feud, never draws the color line, never tries to lord it over his fellow-man, never yearns for higher education, never holds a grudge against his neighbor, never treats an artist shabbily and never turns a beggar away. Often untutored and unlettered, he sometimes has more of the poet and the musician in him, philosopher too, than those who are acclaimed as such. His whole way of life is aesthetic. What marks him as different, sometimes ridiculous, is his serenity and originality. That he aspires to be none other than himself, is this not the essence of wisdom?”
― Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
― Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
Chris’s 2025 Year in Books
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