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177 books
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84 voters
“…it seemed to Kirsch that the most reliable guide to the mental landscape of a patient was the patient himself. He was better placed to explain his behaviour and his experiences than anyone else. Yet wherever Kirsch went, the patient was the very last person anyone thought to consult. Because, of course, the patient was insane.”
― The Einstein Girl
― The Einstein Girl
“One thing I knew about the novelist’s task: when in doubt, write; when empty, write; when afraid, write. Nothing is more impenetrable than the blank page. The blank page is the void, the absence of sense and feeling, the white light of literary death.”
― The Valley of Unknowing
― The Valley of Unknowing
“The railway was part scalpel, part movie camera, slicing the city open, parading its inner workings at fifty frames per second. It was on the S-Bahn that she felt least abandoned, as if the act of travelling turned back the clock, and brought her nearer to the future she had lost.”
― The Einstein Girl
― The Einstein Girl
“And then they would watch her closely as the dark, coagulated masses took form before her eyes, became flesh and bone, became gradually human. For all their show of reluctance, she had a sense that they enjoyed introducing her to these horrors, as seducers took pleasure in the corruption of innocence.”
― The Einstein Girl
― The Einstein Girl
“Old Prague was a story-book city caked in grime: ancient, soot-blackened. History lived in every detail: in the deerstalker rooftops and the blue-sparking trams. He wandered the streets in disbelief, photographing everything, images from Kafka crowding into his head. With the turn of every corner it came back to him: the special frisson you get behind enemy lines.”
― Zoia's Gold
― Zoia's Gold
Francis’s 2025 Year in Books
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