374 ratings (4.12 avg)
326 reviews
more photos (1)

David Piwinski

Add friend

https://www.goodreads.com/daveski

David’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (69)
currently-reading‎ (0)
read‎ (409)

did-not-finish‎ (0)
kindle‎ (102)
52-in-2010‎ (60)

non-fiction‎ (29)
favorites‎ (25)
to-read-stack‎ (6)

unfinished‎ (2)
poetry‎ (0)

Stats | More…

“The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

tags: cool

224 likes

“He was an atheist and it had been years since he read a book, despite the fact that he had amassed a more than decent library of works in his specialty, as well as volumes of philosophy and Mexican history and a novel or two. Sometimes he thought it was precisely because he was an atheist that he didn't read anymore. Not reading, it might be said, was the highest expression of atheism or at least of atheism as he conceived of it. If you don't believe in God, how do you believe in a fucking book? he asked himself.”
― Roberto Bolaño, 2666

24 likes

“But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

39 likes

“Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow. ”
― Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red

tags: books, insight, sorrow

387 likes

“He chose The Metamorphosis over The Trial, he chose Bartleby over Moby-Dick, he chose A Simple Heart over Bouvard and Pecuchet, and A Christmas Carol over A Tale of Two Cities or The Pickwick Papers. What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.”
― Roberto Bolaño, 2666

tags: 227, literature, reading, writing

117 likes

More of David’s quotes…