Age is a terrible thief. Just when you’re getting the hang of life, it knocks your legs out from under you and stoops your back. It makes you ache and muddies your head and silently spreads cancer throughout your spouse. Metastatic,
“Don't go far off, not even for a day,
because I don't know how to say it - a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in
an empty station when the trains are
parked off somewhere else, asleep.
Don't leave me, even for an hour, because then
the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.
Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve
on the beach, may your eyelids never flutter
into the empty distance. Don't LEAVE me for
a second, my dearest, because in that moment you'll
have gone so far I'll wander mazily
over all the earth, asking, will you
come back? Will you leave me here, dying?”
―
because I don't know how to say it - a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in
an empty station when the trains are
parked off somewhere else, asleep.
Don't leave me, even for an hour, because then
the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.
Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve
on the beach, may your eyelids never flutter
into the empty distance. Don't LEAVE me for
a second, my dearest, because in that moment you'll
have gone so far I'll wander mazily
over all the earth, asking, will you
come back? Will you leave me here, dying?”
―
“Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.”
―
―
“It's hard to be wrongfully accused, but it's worse when the people looking down on you are clods who have never read a book or traveled more than twenty miles from the place they were born.”
― The Name of the Wind
― The Name of the Wind
“As bureaucracies accumulate power, they become immune to their own mistakes. Instead of changing their stories to fit reality, they can change reality to fit their stories. In the end external reality matches their bureaucratic fantasies, but only because they forced reality to do so.”
― Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
― Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
“Existential frustration is in itself neither pathological nor pathogenic. A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.”
― Man's Search For Meaning
― Man's Search For Meaning
Joan’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Joan’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Joan
Lists liked by Joan















