16 books
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3 voters
“We don't get to say. Not if we want to save ourselves. We can't question everything. We have to be able to give the help that is asked for. Not what we think is needed. What is asked for. We justify ourselves with a thousand small acts of grace and charity. It's all meaningless. We want to be liked. To be liked. (He is staring out at the sea. He lifts one hand and lets it fall again) God. It goes beyond lacking all conviction. At the very core of despair is the conviction that convictions do not exist. That their reality exists solely in the claims of criminals and lunatics. I was on the beach last night and there was a bright light out to sea. I don't know what it was. A flare. Something. And I thought: What would happen if chaos should come? Would we be worse off? What if this were the sun misrisen at midnight. What if all order were suddenly in abeyance, the skies given over to the access of sudden random moons, everything mindless and migratory. So that all we knew was to be set aside and we found ourselves dwelling in a silent pandemonium. Would we be worse off? Would we be more damned under the transit of constellations unknown to us? What if we suddenly knew nothing? Nothing at all?”
― Whales and Men
― Whales and Men
“Maybe we're just born to love and worry about the people we know, and to go on loving and worrying even when there are more important things we should be doing. And if that means the human species is going to die out, isn't it in a way a nice reason to die out, the nicest reason you can imagine? Because when we should have been reorganising the distribution of the world's resources and transitioning collectively to a sustainable economic model, we were worrying about sex and friendship instead. Because we loved each other too much and found each other too interesting. And I love that about humanity, and in fact it's the very reason I root for us to survive - because we are so stupid about each other.”
― Beautiful World, Where Are You
― Beautiful World, Where Are You
“Rage is only for what you believe can be fixed. All the rest is grief.”
― Stella Maris
― Stella Maris
“I believe that the reason there are millions of planets is the same reason there are millions of eggs. To allow for failure. There must be countless experimental stations like this one. The only thing that is not expendable is the experiment itself. Our notions of our own uniqueness are precisely that. Our notions. We will not be missed. When we have slaughtered and poisoned everything in sight and finally incinerated the earth itself then that black and lifeless lump of slag will simply revolve in the void forever. There is a place for it too. A nameless cinder of no consequence even to god. That man can halt this disaster now seems so remote a possibility as to hardly bear consideration.”
― Whales and Men
― Whales and Men
“Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.”
― Culture and Value
― Culture and Value
Madeleine Dunkers
— 35 members
— last activity Apr 03, 2019 03:37PM
(proto-)Modernism: Proust, Joyce, Musil (& Cervantes, & Sterne &...) et al est'd August 2017 by ATJG, esq. ...more
William T Vollmann Central
— 272 members
— last activity Dec 14, 2025 04:28AM
This corner of goodreads shall serve the needs of rainbow readers of Mr Vollmann's indulgent body of work. We welcome the veteran and the fresh flesh ...more
Norman Mailer
— 20 members
— last activity Dec 10, 2025 07:45AM
Discussion of the late author's work and life. ...more
McCaffery 20th Century Greatest Hits Reading Group
— 23 members
— last activity Apr 04, 2020 10:55PM
This group is for people who would like to read through Larry McCaffery's list of 20th Century fiction: The 20th Century’s Greatest Hits: 100 English- ...more
Reading RURD -- Muslim & American
— 14 members
— last activity Oct 10, 2018 01:36PM
A micro reading=group ; a daughter group of Vollmann Central. We will be reading several essays from volume VI of RURD, from "The Muslim World" and "N ...more
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