Words of encouragement were mumbled with half-hearted sincerity. It wasn’t that folks didn’t care. It was that they knew those words did little to soothe the wound in his soul. Speaking those platitudes and clichéd homilies seemed
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“Happy people didn’t tell lies.”
― Purity
― Purity
“A fact of my life was that I had a morbid fear of reproach, especially from women.”
― Purity
― Purity
“But strict limits to intimacy are the straight man’s burden.”
― Purity
― Purity
“Women of color, queer women, and transgender women need to be better included in the feminist project.”
― Bad Feminist: Essays
― Bad Feminist: Essays
“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”
― Slouching Towards Bethlehem
― Slouching Towards Bethlehem
James’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at James’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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