Eliza A.
https://www.goodreads.com/girlunderglass
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currently-reading (3)
read (824)
did-not-finish (0)
novels (393)
non-fiction (187)
poetry (69)
short-stories (64)
graphic-novels (62)
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in-spanish (46)
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plays (34)
essays (31)
children-s-lit (63)
in-spanish (46)
sci-fi-and-dystopian (43)
music-film-pop-culture (31)
fantasy (30)
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“Sometimes it has seemed to me that life is a series of punishments for such moments of unawareness, that one forges one’s own destiny by what one doesn’t notice or feel compassion for; that what you don’t know and don’t make the effort to understand will become the very thing you are forced into knowledge of.”
― Outline
― Outline
“Be like Sindbad. Venture forth! Embosom the waves, let your shoes be sucked from your feet and your very trousers enticed by the frothing deep. The ambiguous sea awaits, I told them, marry it!
There’s nothing out there, they said.
Wrong, I said, absolutely wrong. There are waltzes, sword canes, and sea wrack dazzling to the eyes.”
― Forty Stories
There’s nothing out there, they said.
Wrong, I said, absolutely wrong. There are waltzes, sword canes, and sea wrack dazzling to the eyes.”
― Forty Stories
“You want to know what I really learned? I learned that people don’t consider time alone as part of their life. Being alone is just a stretch of isolation they want to escape from. I saw a lot of wine-drinking, a lot of compulsive drug use, a lot of sleeping with the television on. It was less festive than I anticipated. My view had always been that I was my most alive when I was totally alone, because that was the only time I could live without fear of how my actions were being scrutinized and interpreted. What I came to realize is that people need their actions to be scrutinized and interpreted in order to feel like what they’re doing matters. Singular, solitary moments are like television pilots that never get aired. They don’t count. This, I think, explains the fundamental urge to get married and have kids[…]. We’re self-conditioned to require an audience, even if we’re not doing anything valuable or interesting. I’m sure this started in the 1970s. I know it did. I think Americans started raising offspring with this implicit notion that they had to tell their children, “You’re amazing, you can do anything you want, you’re a special person.” [...] But—when you really think about it—that emotional support only applies to the experience of living in public. We don’t have ways to quantify ideas like “amazing” or “successful” or “lovable” without the feedback of an audience. Nobody sits by himself in an empty room and thinks, “I’m amazing.” It’s impossible to imagine how that would work. But being “amazing” is supposed to be what life is about. As a result, the windows of time people spend by themselves become these meaningless experiences that don’t really count. It’s filler.”
― The Visible Man
― The Visible Man
“This spot was so close to perfect we would not even want to tell ourselves how lucky we were, having been delivered to it. The best of new places had to be protected from our own cries of delight. We would hold the words for weeks or months, for the soft evening when a stray remark would set us to recollecting. I guess we believed, together, that the wrong voice can obliterate a landscape.”
― The Angel Esmeralda
― The Angel Esmeralda
“There is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother's burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone. But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know.”
― Middlemarch
― Middlemarch
The Wire
— 106 members
— last activity Jan 03, 2013 10:03AM
Appreciation of The Wire and related books, particular those written by the show's writers. ...more
Talk of the Town
— 22 members
— last activity Oct 29, 2023 05:32PM
A book club based on pop culture. Do you always feel the urge to read the popular books? Do you decide to read a book because you just keep hearing a ...more
Goodreads Librarians Group
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— last activity 0 minutes ago
Goodreads Librarians are volunteers who help ensure the accuracy of information about books and authors in the Goodreads' catalog. The Goodreads Libra ...more
Eliza A.’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Eliza A.’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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