“When I was a girl I would look out my bedroom window at the caterpillars; I envied them so much. No matter what they were before, no matter what happened to them, they could just hide away and turn into these beautiful creatures that could fly away completely untouched.”
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―
“If babies held the same tendency toward self-criticism as adults, they might never learn to walk or talk. Can you imagine infants stomping, 'Aarggh! Screwed up again!' Fortunately, babies are free of self-criticism. They just keep practicing.”
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“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― The Bell Jar
― The Bell Jar
“So many people are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only you were interested in them.”
― Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose and Diary Excerpts
― Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose and Diary Excerpts
Existential Book Club
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This a book club for anybody interested in reading existentialist literature and fiction. Every month I'll be putting up a new text either by an exist ...more
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This is a group for readers to recommend and discuss books related to real and/or artificial brains. Categories include but are not limited to: neuros ...more
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Transpersonal psychology is concerned with the study of humanity's highest potential, and with the recognition, understanding, and realization of unit ...more
Bex’s 2025 Year in Books
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