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“If we are transplants, we say we came to New York for its "energy," but the truth is, that energy doesn't come from the streets or the stores or the buzzy power-lunch restaurants. It's not here because of the subways or the block parties or the Puerto Rican Day Parade. We brought it here. It's just the collective energy of us—the by-product and the fumes of the ambition we lugged with us when we came. Ambition: our bright bird-dream and our heavy load.”
― Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York
― Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York
“What a strange fellowship this is, the God seekers in every land, lifting their voices in the most disparate ways imaginable to the God of all life. How does it sound from above? Like bedlam, or do the strains blend in strange ethereal harmony? Does one faith carry the lead or do the parts share in counterpoint and antiphony where not in full throated chorus?
We cannot know. All we can do is to listen carefully and with full attention to each voice in turn as it addresses the divine.”
― The World's Religions
We cannot know. All we can do is to listen carefully and with full attention to each voice in turn as it addresses the divine.”
― The World's Religions
“New York City is mediated by money so visibly. Everywhere everything is mediated by money, so perhaps you could make a brutalist argument for how fabulous it is to live with that so in your face, but my face huts.”
― Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York
― Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York
“Back then a subtle but persistent guilt settled over me whenever things were going too well. It was a bland, uninteresting sort of Protestant guilt. Not as dark as Catholic guilt, not as entertaining as the Jewish variety. It was more like a sense that I shouldn't be having too much fun or feel too self-satisfied, because there were others out there who weren't feeling as good.”
― Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York
― Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York
“She could, at this stage of things, recognize signals like that, as the epileptic is said to—an odor, color, pure piercing grace note announcing his seizure. Afterward it is only this signal, really dross, this secular announcement, and never what is revealed during the attack, that he remembers. Oedipa wondered whether, at the end of this (if it were supposed to end), she too might not be left with only compiled memories of clues, announcements, intimations, but never the central truth itself, which must somehow each time be too bright for her memory to hold; which must always blaze out, destroying its own message irreversibly, leaving an overexposed blank when the ordinary world came back.”
― The Crying of Lot 49
― The Crying of Lot 49
Russ’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Russ’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
1,862 books
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380 friends
156 books
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7 friends
326 books
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225 friends
1,250 books
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79 friends
556 books
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127 friends
154 books
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195 friends
36 books
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31 friends
51 books
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106 friends
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