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I think a lot of what we learn about others isn’t what they tell us. It’s what we observe.
“I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I did as a child. I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Yet it is not the same. Books are, for me, it must be said, the most important thing; what I cannot forget is that there was a time when they were at once more banal and more essential than that. When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled.”
― The Thirteenth Tale
― The Thirteenth Tale
“I squat there and think about how you get trained early on as a woman to perceive how others are perceiving you, at the great expense of what you yourself are feeling about them. Sometimes you mix the two up in a terrible tangle that’s hard to unravel.”
― Writers & Lovers
― Writers & Lovers
“It’s a particular kind of pleasure, of intimacy, loving a book with someone.”
― Writers & Lovers
― Writers & Lovers
“If people appeared to behave pointlessly in grief, it was only because human life was pointless, and this was the truth that grief revealed.”
― Normal People
― Normal People
“I love these geese. They make my chest tight and full and help me believe that things will be all right again, that I will pass through this time as I have passed through other times, that the vast and threatening blank ahead of me is a mere specter, that life is lighter and more playful than I’m giving it credit for. But right on the heels of that feeling, that suspicion that all is not yet lost, comes the urge to tell my mother, tell her that I am okay today, that I have felt something close to happiness, that I might still be capable of feeling happy. She will want to know that. But I can't tell her. That's the wall I always slam into on a good morning like this. My mother will be worrying about me, and I can't tell her that I'm okay.
The geese don't care that I'm crying again. They're used to it.”
― Writers & Lovers
The geese don't care that I'm crying again. They're used to it.”
― Writers & Lovers
Literally Dead Book Club
— 16540 members
— last activity Sep 02, 2026 06:45PM
THIS BOOK CLUB IS NOW HOSTED ON FABLE (AND YOUTUBE AS USUAL) fable.sng.link/Ali7l/8k77h/ddnk A mostly monthly book club (February-November) focused ...more
Olivia’s 2025 Year in Books
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