423 ratings (3.78 avg)
29 reviews

irene

Add friend

https://www.goodreads.com/irene-koo

irene’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (726)
currently-reading‎ (1)
read‎ (422)

classics-so-called‎ (68)
children-and-young-adult‎ (67)
broadly-nonfiction-and-memoir‎ (56)

lat-am‎ (32)
favorites‎ (17)
poetry‎ (13)

short-stories‎ (9)

Stats | More…

irene is Currently Reading

irene is currently reading

Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

by Vladislav M. Zubok

bookshelves: currently-reading, broadly-nonfiction-and-memoir

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Feb 19, 2024 08:05AM

irene’s Quotes

“Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. "There is the blueprint," they say.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

130 likes

“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

tags: belonging, company, desires, literature, longings

6582 likes

“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
― Frederick Douglass

tags: activism, agitation, dissent, liberties, power, radicalism, rights

353 likes

“Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere - be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

tags: growing-up, inspirational, life

2174 likes

“The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen ... Perhaps it can't be done without the poet, but it certainly can't be done without the people. The poet and the people get on generally very badly, and yet they need each other. The poet knows it sooner than the people do. The people usually know it after the poet is dead; but that's all right. The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world.”
― James Baldwin

tags: craft, poets, writing

159 likes

More of irene’s quotes…