“What did I know of life, I who had lived so carefully? Who had neither won nor lost, but just let life happen to him? Who had the usual ambitions and settled all too quickly for them not being realised? Who avoided being hurt and called it a capacity for survival? Who paid his bills, stayed on good terms with everyone as far as possible, for whom ecstasy and despair soon became just words once read in novels? One whose self-rebukes never really inflicted pain? Well, there was all this to reflect upon, while I endured a special kind of remorse: a hurt inflicted at long last on one who always thought he knew how to avoid being hurt—and inflicted for precisely that reason.”
― The Sense of an Ending
― The Sense of an Ending
“Life is about time. Spend more time than you do money on others. Give time more than any other gift. Also, take time when you need to. Take time for you when you need it. Sometimes time is all we have with the people we love the most. I ask you to slow down in life. To take your time, but don't waste it.”
― The Legacy of Lucy Harte
― The Legacy of Lucy Harte
“All you have to do to educate a child is leave him alone and teach him to read. The rest is brainwashing.”
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“You give up the world line by line. Stoically. And then one day you realize that your courage is farcical. It doesn't mean anything. You've become an accomplice in your own annihilation and there is nothing you can do about it. Everything you do closes a door somewhere ahead of you. And finally there is only one door left.”
― The Sunset Limited
― The Sunset Limited
John’s 2025 Year in Books
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