Pat Norman
https://www.goodreads.com/patnorman
“What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.”
― The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor
― The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor
“This last point is a request to the English-speaking reader. In France, certain half-witted ‘commentators’ persist in labelling me a ‘structuralist’. I have been unable to get it into their tiny minds that I have used none of the methods, concepts, or key terms that characterize structural analysis. I should be grateful if a more serious public would free me from a connection that certainly does me honour, but that I have not deserved.”
― The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences
― The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences
“Every single morning I wake with a bang,' he said. 'It's as though the fact that I am alive is injected into me; I am a character in a fairytale, bursting with life.”
― The Solitaire Mystery
― The Solitaire Mystery
“I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in human evolution. We became too self aware; nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, a secretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody’s nobody. I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.”
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“I don't belong anywhere.
I am neither a heart, a diamond, a club, nor a spade. I am neither a King, a Jack, an Eight, nor an Ace.
As I am here - I am merely the Joker, and who that is I have had to find out for myself.
Every time I toss my head, the jingling bells remind me that I have no family.
I have no number - and no trade either.
I have gone around observing your activities from the outside.
Because of this I have also been able to see things to which you have been blind.
Every morning you have gone to work, but you have never been fully awake.
It is different for the Joker, because he was put into this world with a flaw:
he sees too deeply and too much.
Truth is a lonely thing.”
― The Solitaire Mystery
I am neither a heart, a diamond, a club, nor a spade. I am neither a King, a Jack, an Eight, nor an Ace.
As I am here - I am merely the Joker, and who that is I have had to find out for myself.
Every time I toss my head, the jingling bells remind me that I have no family.
I have no number - and no trade either.
I have gone around observing your activities from the outside.
Because of this I have also been able to see things to which you have been blind.
Every morning you have gone to work, but you have never been fully awake.
It is different for the Joker, because he was put into this world with a flaw:
he sees too deeply and too much.
Truth is a lonely thing.”
― The Solitaire Mystery
The Dank Street Depot Great Books Course
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— last activity Jul 23, 2018 07:55PM
For people following along the Dank Street Depot Great Books course, started by Pat and Way.
Pat’s 2025 Year in Books
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