“I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.”
― Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
― Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
“To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are pecularily in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out - since our self-image is untenable - their false notions of us... ”
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“That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.”
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“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”
― Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
― Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe their husband is about to return and need his shoes.”
― The Year of Magical Thinking
― The Year of Magical Thinking
Carly’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Carly’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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