“Order is the Shire of Tolkien’s hobbits: peaceful, productive and safely inhabitable, even by the naive. Chaos is the underground kingdom of the dwarves, usurped by Smaug, the treasure-hoarding serpent. Chaos is the deep ocean bottom to which Pinocchio voyaged to rescue his father from Monstro, whale and fire-breathing dragon. That journey into darkness and rescue is the most difficult thing a puppet must do, if he wants to be real; if he wants to extract himself from the temptations of deceit and acting and victimization and impulsive pleasure and totalitarian subjugation; if he wants to take his place as a genuine Being in the world.”
― 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
― 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
“It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order. If you're going to insist on bending the world to your way, you better have your reasons.”
― 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
― 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
“Sometimes, when people have a low opinion of their own worth—or, perhaps, when they refuse responsibility for their lives—they choose a new acquaintance, of precisely the type who proved troublesome in the past. Such people don’t believe that they deserve any better—so they don’t go looking for it. Or, perhaps, they don’t want the trouble of better. Freud called this a “repetition compulsion.” He thought of it as an unconscious drive to repeat the horrors of the past—sometimes, perhaps, to formulate those horrors more precisely, sometimes to attempt more active mastery and sometimes, perhaps, because no alternatives beckon. People create their worlds with the tools they have directly at hand. Faulty tools produce faulty results. Repeated use of the same faulty tools produces the same faulty results. It is in this manner that those who fail to learn from the past doom themselves to repeat it. It’s partly fate. It’s partly inability. It’s partly … unwillingness to learn? Refusal to learn? Motivated refusal to learn?”
― 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
― 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
“Lobsters have more in common with you than you might think (particularly when you are feeling crabby—ha ha).”
― 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
― 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
“No, the old proverb does not lie: Look for the brave in prison, and the stupid among the political leaders!”
― The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
― The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
Kimberly’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Kimberly’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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