Matthew Busick

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Saul Bellow
“Suppose then that you began with the proposition that boredom was a kind of pain caused by unused powers, the pain of wasted possibilities or talents, and was accompanied by expectations of the optimum utilization of capacities. Nothing actual ever suits pure expectation and such purity of expectation is a great source of tedium. People rich in abilities, in sexual feeling, rich in mind and in invention - all the highly gifted see themselves shunted for decades onto dull sidings, banished exiled nailed up in chicken coops. Imagination has even tried to surmount the problem by forcing boredom itself to yield interest.”
Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift

Saul Bellow
“Boredom is an instrument of social control. Power is the power to impose boredom, to command stasis, to combine this stasis with anguish. The real tedium, deep tedium, is seasoned with terror and with death.”
Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift

James Baldwin
“The aim of the dreamer, after all, is merely to go on dreaming and not be molested by the world. His dreams are his protection against the world. But the aims of life are antithetical to those of the dreamer, and the teeth of the world are sharp.”
James Baldwin, Another Country

Saul Bellow
“The human being, more and more oppressed by the peculiar terms of his existence - one time around for each, no more than a single life per customer - has to think of the boredom of death. O those eternities of nonexistence! For people who crave continual interest and diversity, O! how boring death will be! To live in the grave, in one place, how frightful!”
Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift

John  Williams
“The love of literature, of language, of the mystery of the mind and heart showing themselves in the minute, strange, and unexpected combinations of letters and words, in the blackest and coldest print—the love which he had hidden as if it were illicit and dangerous, he began to display, tentatively at first, and then boldly, and then proudly.”
John Williams, Stoner

53954 Exceptional Books — 2583 members — last activity May 07, 2026 04:23PM
This book club is ONLY for books that are WRITTEN VERY WELL and have a GREAT STORY LINE. We ask that each member shelve at least 2 exceptional books ...more
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