A novel seemed the easiest way to get what I had had in my head into the insides of other people’s heads. Books are good that way.
“I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”
― Nobel Prize in Literature Acceptance Speech, 1949
― Nobel Prize in Literature Acceptance Speech, 1949
“Small wonder our national spirit is husk empty. We have more information but less knowledge. More communication but less community. More goods but less goodwill. More of virtually everything save that which the human spirit requires. So distracted have we become sating this new need or that material appetite, we hardly noticed the departure of happiness”
― The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks
― The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks
Books That Changed My Life
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— last activity Apr 14, 2023 06:04AM
This is a group to discuss and list books that made a difference in your life, impacted the way you live, and so on. (The books don't need to be non ...more
Melissa’s 2025 Year in Books
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