“Was this the real me? Stripped of the ability to look like a punk- what defined me as one? Not my jacket. Not my clothes. My friends? My enemies? No. What I did determined who I was, not what I looked like or what I liked. My actions and reactions. Did I emerge from the shell? I felt naked and free. Was I now pupa or chrysalis? I felt like myself- and that was what punk was. The freedom to be who I was unapologetically, even if I hadn't chosen it.”
― Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In
― Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In
“Joy, it is, which I’ve never known before, only pleasure or excitement. Joy is a different thing, because its focus exists outside the self – delight in something external, not satisfaction of some inner craving.”
― Lit
― Lit
“I began to wonder why I felt like I had to choose one thing over another. I was all of these things. I was a plurality. And I was one thing, one word. I was who I said I was. I had said to Professor Slotten: I'm Phuc. I circled back to my name, the only Phuc I had ever met and the only noun I had for who I was.”
― Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In
― Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In
“All her excitement had seeped away, leaving behind a terrible sadness, an emptiness that felt violent, as if she’d been gouged.”
― A Visit from the Goon Squad
― A Visit from the Goon Squad
“The goal was to have goals, the aim to have aims. This edict came entangled often in hysteria, the embattled hysteria of those whom experience had taught how little antagonism it takes to wreck a life beyond repair.”
― American Pastoral
― American Pastoral
Casey’s 2025 Year in Books
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