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“We seek status because we don’t know our own preferences,” Agnes Callard, a philosopher at the University of Chicago, told me. “When we don’t trust our own definition of what is good, we let other people define it for us.”
― The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work
― The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work
“No, I thank you; I have had an elegant sufficiency of the numerous delicacies. Any more would be an unsophisticated superfluity, for gastronomic satiety admonishes me that I have reached the ultimate stage of deglutition consistent with dietetic integrity. ”
― I Am One of You Forever
― I Am One of You Forever
“The main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings," said Paul, "not to serve as appendages to machines, institutions, and systems.”
― Player Piano
― Player Piano
“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
―
―
“They walked him into the cane and then turned him around. He tried to stand bravely... They looked at Oscar and he looked at them and then he started to speak. The words coming out like they belonged to someone else, his Spanish good for once. He told them that what they were doing was wrong, that they were going to take a great love out of the world. Love was a rare thing, easily confused with a million other things, and if anybody knew this to be true it was him. He told them about Ybón and the way he loved her and how much they had risked and that they'd started to dream the same dreams and say the same words. He told them that it was only because of her love that he'd been able to do the thing that he had done, the thing they could no longer stop, told them if they killed him they would probably feel nothing and their children would probably feel nothing either, not until they were old and weak or about to be struck by a car and then they would sense him waiting for them on the other side and over there he wouldn't b no fatboy or dork or kid no girl had ever loved; over there he'd be a hero, an avenger. Because anything you can dream (he put his hand up) you can be.
They waited respectfully for him to finish and then they said, their faces slowly disappearing in the gloom, Listen, we'll let you go if you tell us what "fuego" means in English.
Fire, he blurted out, unable to help himself.
Oscar—”
― The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
They waited respectfully for him to finish and then they said, their faces slowly disappearing in the gloom, Listen, we'll let you go if you tell us what "fuego" means in English.
Fire, he blurted out, unable to help himself.
Oscar—”
― The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Joseph’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Joseph’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
677 books
|
90 friends
477 books
|
87 friends
218 books
|
16 friends
787 books
|
57 friends
226 books
|
13 friends
15 books
|
89 friends
247 books
|
10 friends
149 books
|
72 friends
More friends…
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