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“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― The Bell Jar
― The Bell Jar
“Possibly, then, writing has to do with darkness, and a desire or perhaps a compulsion to enter it, and, with luck, to illuminate it, and to bring something back out to the light.”
― Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing
― Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing
“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.
...live in the question.”
― Letters to a Young Poet
...live in the question.”
― Letters to a Young Poet
“We are powerful enough to light the world at night, to artificially refrigerate food, to leave Earth’s atmosphere and orbit it from outer space. But we cannot save those we love from suffering. This is the story of human history as I understand it—the story of an organism that can do so much, but cannot do what it most wants.”
― Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
― Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
“In the meantime, I hope you will find your place, wherever you are. Even in the silence, I hope you will find the words you need to share.”
― Divine Rivals
― Divine Rivals
abigail’s 2025 Year in Books
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