“What if the meaning of life on earth is not eternal progress toward some unspecified goal—the engineering and production of more and more powerful technologies, the development of more and more complex and abstruse cultural forms? What if these things just rise and recede naturally, like tides, while the meaning of life remains the same always—just to live and be with other people?”
― Beautiful World, Where Are You
― Beautiful World, Where Are You
“I think of the twentieth century as one long question, and in the end we got the answer wrong. Aren't we unfortunate babies to be born when the world ended? After that there was no chance for the planet, and no chance for us.”
― Beautiful World, Where Are You
― Beautiful World, Where Are You
“Anyway, as a consequence, each day has now become a new and unique informational unit, interrupting and replacing the informational world of the day before.”
― Beautiful World, Where Are You
― Beautiful World, Where Are You
“Things matter to me more than they do to normal people, I thought. I need to relax and let things go.”
― Conversations with Friends
― Conversations with Friends
“Maybe we're just born to love and worry about the people we know, and to go on loving and worrying even when there are more important things we should be doing. And if that means the human species is going to die out, isn't it in a way a nice reason to die out, the nicest reason you can imagine? Because when we should have been reorganising the distribution of the world's resources and transitioning collectively to a sustainable economic model, we were worrying about sex and friendship instead. Because we loved each other too much and found each other too interesting. And I love that about humanity, and in fact it's the very reason I root for us to survive - because we are so stupid about each other.”
― Beautiful World, Where Are You
― Beautiful World, Where Are You
Emmi’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Emmi’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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