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“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”
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“No, you are not the nameless master of the world, the one on whom history had lost its hold, the one who no longer felt the rain falling, who did not see the approach of night. You are no longer the inaccessible, the limpid, the transparent one. You are afraid, you are waiting. You are waiting, on Place Clichy, for the rain to stop falling.”
― Un homme qui dort
― Un homme qui dort
“But what distressed him greatly was not having another hermit there to confess him and to receive consolation from; and so he solaced himself with pacing up and down the little meadow, and writing and carving on the bark of trees and on the fine sand a multitude of verses all in harmony with his sadness”
― Don Quixote
― Don Quixote
“There is no real direction here, neither lines of power nor cooperation. Decisions are never really made – at best they manage to emerge, from a chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations and all around assholery. ”
― Gravity's Rainbow
― Gravity's Rainbow
“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.”
― A Year With Swollen Appendices
― A Year With Swollen Appendices
Niccy’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Niccy’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
418 books
|
7 friends
63 books
|
3 friends
91 books
|
4 friends
5 books
|
2 friends
11 books
|
2 friends
23 books
|
1 friend
0 books
|
1 friend
36 books
|
1 friend
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Niccy
Lists liked by Niccy
