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“I didn't find my story; it found me, as autobiography always does: finds you out in your deepest most private places.”
― The Exiled Heart: A Meditative Autobiography
― The Exiled Heart: A Meditative Autobiography
“Thousands of years ago, the work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same every day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their lives. That was how it had to be; it was how you got a productive economy. But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who’d made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story. If their employees came home at day’s end with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing. The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them. People who couldn’t live without story had been driven into the concents or into jobs like Yul’s. All others had to look somewhere outside of work for a feeling that they were part of a story, which I guessed was why Sæculars were so concerned with sports, and with religion. How else could you see yourself as part of an adventure? Something with a beginning, middle, and end in which you played a significant part?”
― Anathem
― Anathem
“To think clearly about the future, we need to clean up the language that we use in labeling the beliefs we had in the past.”
― Thinking, Fast and Slow
― Thinking, Fast and Slow
“Humans, short-lived and locked out of the gray places for life, do not do well with uncertainty. If they cannot have what might, what could, what should, and perhaps most awful of all what should have been, then they will dream it up instead, imagine it into being in whatever twisted or beautiful form suits, and then drive their fellows to their knees in chains by the thousand and million to pretend in chorus that it is so.”
― The Steel Remains
― The Steel Remains
“the phenomenology of enjoyment has eight major components. When people reflect on how it feels when their experience is most positive, they mention at least one, and often all, of the following. First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours. The combination of all these elements causes a sense of deep enjoyment that is so rewarding people feel that expending a great deal of energy is worthwhile simply to be able to feel it.”
― Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
― Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Gray’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Gray’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
5,506 books
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61 friends
6,379 books
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1,441 friends
147 books
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226 friends
1,208 books
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30 friends
1,205 books
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194 friends
367 books
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350 friends
29 books
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4,985 friends
1,102 books
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1,352 friends
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