“You can be shaped, or you can be broken. There is not much in between. Try to learn. Be coachable. Try to learn from everybody, especially those who fail. This is hard. ... How promising you are as a Student of the Game is a function of what you can pay attention to without running away.”
― Infinite Jest
― Infinite Jest
“What metro Boston AAs are trite but correct about is that both destiny's kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person's basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in their life: i.e almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer.”
― Infinite Jest
― Infinite Jest
“...God might regard the issue of whether you believe there's a God or not as fair low on his/her/its list of things s/he/it's interested in re you.”
― Infinite Jest
― Infinite Jest
“The most dangerous drink is gin. You have to be really, really careful with that. And you also have to be 45, female and sitting on the stairs. Because gin isn't really a drink, it's more a mascara thinner. "Nobody likes my shoes!" "I made... I made fifty... fucking vol-au-vents, and not one of you... not one of you... said 'Thank you.'" And my favourite: "Everybody, shut up. Shut up! This song is all about me.”
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“[…] his own father told him that talent is sort of a dark gift, that talent is its own expectation: it is there from the start and either lived up to or lost.”
― Infinite Jest
― Infinite Jest
Vivienne’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Vivienne’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Favorite Genres
Adult Fiction, Art, Biography, Book Club, Literary Fiction, Non-fiction, Philosophy, Poetry, Politics, and War
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