Desiree

https://www.goodreads.com/desireeslibrary

Desiree’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (677)
currently-reading‎ (0)
read‎ (683)
did-not-finish‎ (1)
bipoc-author‎ (213)
read-in-2023‎ (113)

read-in-2024‎ (112)
4-stars‎ (102)
2025‎ (101)
read-in-2022‎ (78)
5-stars‎ (51)
lgbtq‎ (50)

nonfiction‎ (48)
not-4-but-not-5‎ (43)
translated-books‎ (34)
muslim-rep‎ (28)
poetry‎ (26)
memoirs-and-biographies‎ (23)

2026‎ (22)
mental-health‎ (15)
nocritcism‎ (14)
made-me-cry‎ (9)
audiobooks‎ (3)
disability-rep‎ (1)

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“What you're trying to say is that it's easier for you to hide in your own darkness, than emerge cloaked in your own vulnerability. Not better, but easier. However the longer you hold it in, the more likely you are to suffocate.
At some point, you must breathe.”
― Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water

141 likes

“...I would think how words go straight up in a thin line, quick and harmless, and how terribly doing goes along the earth, clinging to it, so that after a while the two lines are too far apart for the same person to straddle from one to the other; and that sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words.”
― William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

158 likes

“They say nothing lasts forever and I’m writing you in the voice of an endangered species.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

183 likes

“Betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

tags: babel

472 likes

“Imagine, [Kriezler] said, that you enter a large, somewhat crumbling hall that echoes with the sounds of people mumbling and talking repetitively to themselves. All around you these people fall into prostrate positions, some of them weeping. Where are you? Sara’s answer was immediate: in an asylum. Perhaps, Kreizler answered, but you could also be in a church. In the one place the behavior would be considered mad; in the other, not only sane, but as respectable as any human activity can be.”
― Caleb Carr, The Alienist

38 likes

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