“I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.”
― The Winter of Our Discontent
― The Winter of Our Discontent
“I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.”
― Infinite Jest
― Infinite Jest
“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
― 1984
― 1984
“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
―
―
“I often think that he's the only one of us who's achieved immortality. I don't mean in the sense of fame and I don't mean he won't die someday. But he's living it. I think he is what the conception really means. You know how people long to be eternal. But they die with everyday that passes. . . They change, they deny, they contradict- and they call it growth. At the end there is nothing left, nothing unreveresed or unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out of an unformed mass. How do they expect a permanence which they never held for a single moment? But Howard- one can imagine him living forever.”
― The Fountainhead
― The Fountainhead
Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
— 22364 members
— last activity Jun 04, 2026 07:37AM
For those attempting the crazy feat of reading all 1001 books! For discerning bibliophiles and readers who enjoy unforgettable classic literature, 10 ...more
Annie’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Annie’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Art, Book Club, Children's, Classics, Contemporary, Fiction, Food, Graphic novels, Memoir, and Science fiction
Polls voted on by Annie
Lists liked by Annie

































