“Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment. ”
― Norwegian Wood
― Norwegian Wood
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Norwegian Wood
― Norwegian Wood
“The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it.”
― The Bell Jar
― The Bell Jar
“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
“Wasn’t friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely?”
― A Little Life
― A Little Life
Olivia’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Olivia’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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