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Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
“Luck is the way the wind swirls and the dust settles eons after God has passed by.”
Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

Simon Winchester
“Our histories, our novels, our poems, our plays—they are all in this one book.”
Simon Winchester, The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary

Yuval Noah Harari
“When a thousand people believe some made-up story for one month, that’s fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years, that’s a religion, and we are admonished not to call it “fake news” in order not to hurt the feelings of the faithful (or incur their wrath). Note, however, that I am not denying the effectiveness or potential benevolence of religion. Just the opposite. For better or worse, fiction is among the most effective tools in humanity’s tool kit. By bringing people together, religious creeds make large-scale human cooperation possible. They inspire people to build hospitals, schools, and bridges in addition to armies and prisons. Adam and Eve never existed, but Chartres Cathedral is still beautiful.”
Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Robert Olen Butler
“I can speak these words and perhaps you can see these things clearly because you are using your imagination. But I cannot imagine these things because I lived them, and to remember them with the vividness I know they should have is impossible. They are lost to me.”
Robert Olen Butler, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

Machado de Assis
“Perhaps the reader is astonished by the frankness with which I expose and emphasize my mediocrity; let him remember that frankness is the virtue most appropriate to a defunct. In life, the watchful eye of public opinion, the conflict of interests, the struggle of greed against greed oblige a man to hide his old rags, to conceal the rips and patches, to withhold from the world the revelations that he makes to his own conscience; and the greatest reward comes when a man, in so deceiving others, manages at the same time to deceive himself, for in such case he spares himself shame, which is a painful experience, and hypocrisy, which is a hideous vice. But in death, what a difference! what relief! what freedom! How glorious to throw away your cloak, to dump your spangles in a ditch, to unfold yourself, to strip off all your paint and ornaments, to confess plainly what you were and what you failed to be! For, after all, you have no neighbors, no friends, no enemies, no acquaintances, no strangers, no audience at all. The sharp and judicial eye of public opinion loses its power as soon as we enter the territory of death. I do not deny that it sometimes glances this way and examines and judges us, but we dead folk are not concerned about its judgment. You who still live, believe me, there is nothing in the world so monstrously vast as our indifference.”
Machado de Assis, Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas

738854 HFK's Fear Group Read — 96 members — last activity May 22, 2020 11:33AM
Buddy/Group read of Fear: Trump in the White House starting on September 11. This is a read for all views: neutral-Trumps, anti-Trumps and pro-Trumps ...more
912840 Babel — 3 members — last activity Mar 25, 2019 07:20PM
Group dedicated to discussions around "A Short Stay in Hell" by Steven L. Peck ...more
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