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This book made me cry, multiple times. I loved it.
Reading this book was surreal. So many of the things I've wanted to say in my life, but lacked the words to express, was captured by this masterpiece.
This book follows the lives of two families --thThis book made me cry, multiple times. I loved it.
Reading this book was surreal. So many of the things I've wanted to say in my life, but lacked the words to express, was captured by this masterpiece.
This book follows the lives of two families --the Trasks and Hamiltons. The interactions between the families reveal humans at their finest moments and most depraved.
Earlier this evening, I finished the book and began pacing. I was pacing for a good hour before I was able to pinpoint exactly what made this book soar above so many other literary delectables. My conclusion is that it must be the emphasis on human choice. That is, the human capacity for choice. The very thing that renders people divine. We express humanity in all its fullness when we exercise the choice to become a person that is good in spite of our evil inclinations. No, not even the sins of our father or mother can decide how we make the everyday choices that come to define us.
I think most people have felt it. You know, the feeling when it seems the world is conspiring to make you act and live according to a fated path. To conform to what the universe and all its inhabitants define you as. You see, everyone comes into this world and is told that they are to be a certain way --perhaps a precedent set by familial ties or maybe ethnicity. But, at the end of the day, we should never forget the innate freedom that we have as humans to choose between good and evil. We always have the choice to be better.
Perhaps I'm partial to this novel because of my deep appreciation for existentialism. But how can person not admire a tradition that recognizes life itself. The thing that differentiates us from all other creatures, the substance of humanity, the freedom that is the sweet nectar to an insipid diet.
With that melodramatic intro, I now present my favorite quotes from this book --accompanied by a little blurb explaining my thoughts.
You're not clever. You don't know what you want. You have no proper fierceness. You let other people walk over you. Sometimes I think you're a weakling who will never amount to a dog turd. Does that answer your question? I love you better. I always have. This may be a bad thing to tell you, but it's true. I love you better. Else why would I have given myself the trouble of hurting you?
Adam was always the brother getting criticised by his father, pretty much because he was too soft. But, his softness is what made his father secretly love him, even more than his brother who seemed the quintessential version of what his hard, military father wanted out of a son. Man, this revelation was a weird twist in the story. It seems wrong for the father to play a favorite at all, but in truth, is there really any parent with children who doesn't secretly have a favorite? Teachers, coaches, politicians, bosses --they all have favorites, so how could parents not? Even God plays favorites in the Bible. But this playing of favorites is the source of serious conflict -- it's the story of Cain and Abel. Surely, every person with a sibling can understand what it's like to yearn for a mother or father's approval.
It's me should be where you are and you here.
--By the way, this is not a typo, its just an uneducated boy talking.--
Another twist, why was Aron not sent to the military even though he's got the trappings of military man? And why was Adam not kept on the ranch when he so perfectly fits the agrarian life. The inexplicable twists and turns of life. They make no sense. What good is it to shout at the wind. We must keep living lest we succumb to bitterness.
Mr. Edwards had never experienced such misery. As a matter of business he had learned so much about women that he did not trust one for a second. And since he deeply loved Catherine and love requires trust, he was torn to quivering fragments by his emotion.
Amazing, when an entirely cynical married man --a professional pimp in this case-- falls in love with a whore. Weird how loves catches a hold of even the seemingly impenetrable, reducing them to men begging on their knees.
Samuel raised a distinctly superior breed. They were better read and better bred than most of their contemporaries. To all of them Samuel communicated his love of learning and he set them apart from the prideful ignorance of their time.
Sam-I-am, my favorite person in the book. Kinda like my brother --his name is Sam too. Anyway, Samuel is an eccentric, learned man. He is wiser, and smarter than all the men of his town. I respect the man for being his unapologetic self. As a tribute, I will raise my own flock the same way.
'There's a capacity for appetite,' Samuel said, 'that a whole heaven and earth of cake can't satisfy'
Why do the super rich, those endowed with the most beautiful and kind spouses commit suicide? Well, here is Samuel's explanation --the insatiable appetitive needs of man. So cursed, man of perdition.
There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension.
It's true. When a person asks a question in earnest, in good-faith, nothing is off the table for discussion. But, when the probing questions come with the inflection of derision, you know you are dealing with an asshole.
'I'll want to hear,' Samuel said. 'I eat stories like grapes.'
LOL. Eat stories like grapes.
Then he saw the faraway joyous look on his father's face and a shiver of shared delight came to him. The Hamilton children loved it when their father's mind went free. Then the world was peopled with wonders.
That's what fiction does to a man. It makes him a real delight to be around, lost in reveries, looking at the best in others, seeing them for what they can be rather than what they are.
On one side you have warmth and companionship and sweet understanding, and on the other --cold, lonely greatness. There you make your choice. I'm glad I chose mediocrity, but how am I to say what reward might have come with the other? None of my children will be great either, except perhaps Tom. He's suffering over the choosing right now. It's a painful thing to watch. And somewhere in me I want him to say yes. Isn't that strange? A father to want his son condemned to greatness! What selfishness that must be.
The sacrifices that a man must make to be truly great. I would take the lonely path in a heartbeat.
'I don't very much believe in blood,' said Samuel. 'I think when a man finds good or bad in his children he is seeing only what he planted in them after they cleared the womb.'
We are not defined by the sins of our fathers. What a cop out, a sidestepping of our existential responsibility to choose.
That's exactly right. She most of all would disagree, and so I would not say it to her and let loose the thunder of her disagreement. She wins all arguments by the use of vehemence and the conviction that a difference of opinion is a personal affront. She's a fine woman, but you have to learn to feel your way with her.
Sometimes, people are obstinate. They are good people, but it's best not to poke at their ignorance lest you needlessly disrupt the peace. Samuel is a better man, a better husband for his patience and tact.
I take a pleasure into inquiring into things. I've never been content to pass a stone without looking under it.
Spoken like a true philosopher. My man Samuel.
And I here make a rule --a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange foreign is not interesting --only the deeply personal and familiar.
The greatest fiction --so seemingly detached from reality-- is ironically great because it is the most personal story of your life and my life. The stilited tellings of non-fiction fails to capture the depth of the human experience in the way fiction does.
The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt --and there is the story of mankind.
Oof. Yes, I have seen even grow men, grandmas and grandpas, still fighting with their siblings in the present because of the dynamics of love and rejection tracing back to childhood.
But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed --because 'Thou mayest.'
Thou mayest, those holy words that imbue us with the power to choose our fate.
you should have sat through some of those nights of argument and discussion. the questions, the inspection, oh, the lovely thinking --the beautiful thinking.
Man, is a reed, a thinking reed --from somewhere in Pensee. Anyway, that we're thinking put us above and beyond all of creation. :)
But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There's no godliness there.
I guess even after the Fall of man, we still have an intimation of divinity. We have a choice.
'Thou mayest rule over sin' Lee. That's it. I do not believe all men are destroyed. I can name you a dozen who were not, and they are the ones the world lives by. it is true of the spirit as it is true of battles --only the winners are remembered. Surely most men are destroyed, but there are others who like pillars of fire guide frightened men through the darkness.
Amen. Sure, the majority succumb, but there are the few who prevail in spite of great temptation. And these are the greatest men and women to live. A light in a world blanketed with darkness.
All things come to men who know. Yes, I'm a believer in the torch of learning.
Learning, once again, the faculty of the mind put man above other creatures.
There's more beauty in the truth even if it is dreadful beauty. the storytellers at the city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and this only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar.
Telling the truth, especially when it's hard is important.
I know that sometimes a lie used in kindness. I don't believe it ever works kindly. the quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost. that's a running sore.
A lie no matter how small is no match for the truth.
'I was afraid I had you in me' 'You have,' said Kate 'No, I haven't. I'm my own. I don't have t be you.' 'How do you know that?' she demanded. 'I just know. It just came to me whole. If I'm mean, it's my own mean.'
This is how a child confounds a wicked smart, but highly disturbed mother. By insisting that humans don't have to be depraved according to the sins of a mother. We choose.
'I think I love you, Cal.' 'I'm not good.' 'Because you're not good.'
The irony is that true goodness requires the sickening admission of our terrible capacity for evil. True evil is denying what we know to be true, that none of us are good.
He wanted the story and he wanted it to come out his way. he couldn't stand to have it come out any other way.
Oh some people protect themselves from a filthy world by creating our conception of what it should be and holding unto to it as if our life depends on it. But, this prevents growth, for the one holding the conception and those who love him....more
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