“I will cut adrift—I will sit on pavements and drink coffee—I will dream; I will take my mind out of its iron cage and let it swim—this fine October.”
―
―
“What happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past.”
―
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“I want to tell her that darkness is not bad. It is only the place we can't see yet.”
― Abandon Me: Memoirs
― Abandon Me: Memoirs
“We all craft a story we can live with. The one that makes ourselves easier to live with. This is not the one worth writing. To write your story, you must face a truer version of it. You must look at the parts that hurt, that do not flatter or comfort you. That do not spare you the trouble of knowing what made you, and what into. I used to wonder if my own difficulty in doing this made me a hypocrite. Now, I'm not sure I believe in hypocrites. We often prescribe for others the thing we most need. It is part of how we learn.”
― Abandon Me: Memoirs
― Abandon Me: Memoirs
“Maybe that's all bravery is: when your hunger is greater than your fear. I resist the implication that bravery is noble. I must face the things that scare me in order to survive. And survival is not noble. It is not a sacrifice of self but in service to the self.”
― Abandon Me: Memoirs
― Abandon Me: Memoirs
Kelly’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Kelly’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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