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“The perfect life, the perfect lie, I realised after Christmas, is one which prevents you from doing that which you would ideally have done (painted, say, or written unpublishable poetry) but which, in fact, you have no wish to do. People need to feel that they have been thwarted by circumstances from pursuing the life which, had they led it, they would not have wanted; whereas the life they really want is precisely a compound of all those thwarting circumstances.”
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“But we knew that when one goes into a shop and buys a cake one gets nothing but a cake, which may be very good, but is only a cake; whereas if one goes into the kitchen and makes a cake because some people one respects and probably likes are coming to eat at one’s table, one is striking a low note on a scale that is struck higher up by Beethoven and Mozart.”
― Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
― Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
“The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it.”
― The Bell Jar
― The Bell Jar
“It's striking how many of the world's biggest problems, and many of the small ones too. are eliminated by the simplest of solutions – having women around.”
― Another Great Day at Sea: Life Aboard the USS George H. W. Bush
― Another Great Day at Sea: Life Aboard the USS George H. W. Bush
“Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations.”
― Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
― Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
Tom’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Tom’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
396 books
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160 friends
190 books
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126 friends
1,031 books
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106 friends
52 books
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20 friends
202 books
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30 friends
944 books
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95 friends
323 books
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35 friends
425 books
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61 friends
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