In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know you’ve taken all the baths you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any
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“Listen, I know you run your mouth so your mind can rest.”
― The Madness Vase
― The Madness Vase
“And yet it is within the powers of a boring book to bore even the mind of God, as God well knows.”
― A Woman First: First Woman: A Memoir
― A Woman First: First Woman: A Memoir
“I asked for very little from life, and even this little was denied me. A nearby field, a ray of sunlight, a little bit of calm along with a bit of bread, not to feel oppressed by the knowledge that I exist, not to demand anything from others, and not to have others demand anything from me - this was denied me, like the spare change we might deny a beggar not because we're mean-hearted but because we don't feel like unbuttoning our coat.”
― The Book of Disquiet
― The Book of Disquiet
“We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows, the same redbreasts that we used to call ‘God’s birds’ because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known?”
― The Mill on the Floss
― The Mill on the Floss
Lena’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Lena’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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