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77,123 books
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287,230 voters
“I've already said an addict is a person with holes. These holes are either congenital, shot out, or carved and eaten away at until what remains is this thing, the hole. The hole can never be filled. The thing most likely to fill the hole is love, but love is fleeting, unreliable, conditional. Drugs are unconditional.”
― Essays and Fictions
― Essays and Fictions
“You see? In the fairy tales one does as one wants, and in reality one does what one can.”
― Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
― Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
“How could I have thought that I needed to cure myself in order to fit into the 'real' world? I didn't need curing, and the world didn't, either; the only thing that did need curing was my understanding of my place in it. Without that understanding - without a sense of belonging to the real world - it was impossible to thrive in an imagined one.”
― How to Be Alone
― How to Be Alone
“It seems universally accepted that the ocean and its unrelenting tide is a source of comfort and peace. The Pacific Ocean is, after all, named the Pacific. I myself find it boring. But boredom is a kind of comfort, and a modern luxury. Boredom can be pacifying. What does the ocean really do, but deliver one predictable wave after another? In this way it’s like life. Every morning my body wakes, crunches, shits, cries out for food. Then it aches and moves and works and tires, eats and sleeps again, setting up the same for the following morning. This is a kind of tide. It isn’t calming or pacific.”
― Essays and Fictions
― Essays and Fictions
“However, narrating what you remember, telling it to someone, does something else. The more a person recalls a memory, the more they change it. Each time they put it into language, it shifts. The more you describe a memory, the more likely it is that you are making a story that fits your life, resolves the past, creates a fiction you can live with. It’s what writers do. Once you open your mouth, you are moving away from the truth of things. According to neuroscience. The safest memories are locked in the brains of people who can’t remember. Their memories remain the closest replica of actual events. Underwater. Forever.”
― The Chronology of Water
― The Chronology of Water
Elaina’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Elaina’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
1,193 books
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166 friends
1,451 books
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89 friends
399 books
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32 friends
46 books
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1 friend
1,117 books
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114 friends
1,340 books
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230 friends
3 books
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1 friend
170 books
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16 friends
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Favorite Genres
Art, Classics, History, Memoir, Music, Non-fiction, Philosophy, Poetry, Psychology, Science, and Self help
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