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Philip Roth
“People were standing up everywhere shouting, "This is me! This is me!" Every time you looked at them they stood up and told you who they were, and the truth of it was that they had no more idea who or what they were than he had. They believed their flashing signs, too. They ought to be standing up and shouting, "This isn't me! This isn't me!" They would if they had any decency. "This isn't me!" Then you might know how to proceed through the flashing bullshit of this world.”
Philip Roth, American Pastoral

“Tell me this, pal, why isn't everybody sitting on a fence in the moonlight playing a banjo? That's all I want to know.”
Vincent Lawrence

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
“For I say to you in all the sadness of conviction, that to think great thoughts you must be heroes as well as idealists. Only when you have worked alone – when you have felt around you a black gulf of solitude more isolating than that which surrounds the dying man, and in hope and in despair have trusted to your own unshaken will – then only will you have achieved. Thus only can you gain the secret isolated joy of the thinker, who knows that, a hundred years after he is dead and forgotten, men who have never heard of him will be moving to the measure of his thought – the subtle rapture of a postponed power, which the world knows not because it has no external trappings, but which to his prophetic vision is more real than that which commands an army.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

George Carlin
“Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!

But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money!”
George Carlin

Saul Bellow
“We never learn anything, never in the world, and in spite of all the history books written. They’re just the way we plead or ague with ourselves about it, but it’s only light from the outside that we’re supposed to take inside. If we can. There’s a regular warehouse of fine suggestions and if we’re not better it isn’t because there aren’t plenty of marvelous and true ideas to draw on, but because our vanity weighs more than all of them put together.”
Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March

26007 Dylanists — 87 members — last activity Jul 18, 2019 04:25PM
For Bob Dylan fans interested in understanding and discussing the literary merits of his work.
43519 readers advisory for all — 5748 members — last activity Jul 14, 2026 02:35PM
life's too short to read crappy books. this is why readers' advisory exists. feel free to join if you are looking for "a book like____" or "a book tha ...more
19703 Infinite Summer — 305 members — last activity Jun 21, 2019 03:36PM
For all those planning to read Infinite Jest this summer starting June 21. Support, encouragement and gentle pushes welcome.
7198 TIME All-Time 100 Novels — 25 members — last activity Nov 30, 2011 12:37PM
For anyone trying to read the novels on this list: http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html
8463 David Foster Wallace — 298 members — last activity Oct 15, 2016 07:21PM
A group for the amazing work of David Foster Wallace, now deceased. RIP 1962-2008 Feel free to add his books to the bookshelf for the group.
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