Bret O'brien

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Bret’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (289)
currently-reading‎ (1)
read‎ (121)

did-not-finish‎ (0)
to-buy‎ (139)
kid‎ (40)

fiction‎ (31)
non-fiction‎ (29)
school-books‎ (3)

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Bret is Currently Reading

Bret O'brien is currently reading

The Wealth of Nations

by Adam Smith

bookshelves: currently-reading

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Dec 01, 2012 10:24PM

Bret’s Quotes

“feeling - probably for the first time in my life - the fear and excitement of living in a place where you never know what's going to happen or when.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

7 likes

“When she fucked up all those years ago, just a little girl terrified into paralysis, she fell onto the enigma of herself.”
― John Green

tags: death, john-green, life, looking-for-alaska, pain

49 likes

“You're not going to impose the patriarchal paradigm on me.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

28 likes

“I thought it might be a fine time to say the Three Little Words. And I steeled myself to say them as I stared up at that starriest night, convinced myself that she felt it, too, that her hand so alive and vivid against my leg was more than playful, and fuck Lara and fuck Jake because I do, Alaska Young, I do love you and what else matters but that and my lips parted to speak and before I could even begin to breathe out the words, she said, “It’s not life or death, the labyrinth.”
― John Green

tags: looking-for-alaska

17 likes

“She cannot possibly be dead, people do not just die”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

tags: death

14 likes

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Bret’s Groups

¡ POETRY ! — 22508 members — last activity Jul 31, 2026 02:04PM
No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read it!) Goodreads honors wordsmiths: poets and poetry promoted and prompted here. ~~~ "Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits." -- Carl Sandburg “God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.” —Anne Sexton On Clouds – “…what primitive tastes the ancients must have had if their poets were inspired by those absurd, untidy clumps of mist, idiotically jostling one another about…” —Yevgeny Zamyatin “If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn’t wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.” —Donald Hall “Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.” —Boris Pasternak “Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.” —Charles Simic “Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.” —Gustave Flaubert “Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.” —Allen Ginsberg. ~~~~~ Amy King, Moderator Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the WNBA Award (Women’s National Book Association). Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She serves on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is co-editing with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology, Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She is also co-editing the anthology, Bettering American Poetry 2015, and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College. ...more

Neal Caffrey and Mozzie's Book List — 1139 members — last activity Jan 27, 2026 08:07AM
I recently became a fan of the USA Network Series "White Collar". Although fiction, I've enjoyed conceptually how well-read / learned main characters ...more