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“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
―
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“When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder.
Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table.
I spent my life learning to feel less.
Every day I felt less.
Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?
You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”
― Everything Is Illuminated
Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table.
I spent my life learning to feel less.
Every day I felt less.
Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?
You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”
― Everything Is Illuminated
“Some people ask: “Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?” Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general—but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women.”
― We Should All Be Feminists
― We Should All Be Feminists
BookTube 2018!
— 9339 members
— last activity Mar 22, 2026 04:57PM
For those of us who love GoodReads AND YouTube! Do you review novels on YouTube? Come join the group!
Hogwarts School For Witchcraft and Wizardry
— 888 members
— last activity Nov 24, 2023 04:36PM
Note: This school year is now in 1960. Voldemort is at large! Come, and join Hogwarts School For Witchcraft & Wizardry! Take the main classes, talk to ...more
The Rory Gilmore Book Club
— 23706 members
— last activity 18 hours, 20 min ago
Reading is sexy! This group is for fans of literature and the Gilmore Girls. Join us for some witty banter, numerous pop culture references, and enlig ...more
50 books to read before you die
— 12052 members
— last activity Jun 04, 2026 06:29PM
These are the named books: 1 The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien 2 1984 by George Orwell 3 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 4 The Gra ...more
South Asian Literature
— 1261 members
— last activity Jul 22, 2024 08:37AM
For readers around the world interested in literature from or about South Asia! Countries of interest include India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhut ...more
Ricquetta’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Ricquetta’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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