“Life is bearable even when it's unbearable: that is what's so terrible, that is the unbearable thing about it.”
― Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence
― Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence
“To be interested in something is to be involved in what is essentially a stressful relationship with that thing, to suffer anxiety on its behalf.”
― Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence
― Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence
“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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“The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it.”
― The Bell Jar
― The Bell Jar
“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
Tom’s 2025 Year in Books
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