“Only those who still have hope can benefit from tears. When they finish, they feel better. But to those without hope, whose anguish is basic and permanent, no good comes from crying. Nothing changes for them. They usually know this, but still can’t help crying.”
― The Day of the Locust
― The Day of the Locust
“And you'll always love me won't you?
Yes
And the rain won't make any difference?
No”
― A Farewell to Arms
Yes
And the rain won't make any difference?
No”
― A Farewell to Arms
“These lights, this brightness, these clusters of human hope, of wild desire—I shall take these lights in my fingers. I shall make them bright, and whether they shine or not, it is in these fingers that they shall succeed or fail.”
― The Love of the Last Tycoon
― The Love of the Last Tycoon
“When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.”
― East of Eden
― East of Eden
“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
― Anna Karenina
― Anna Karenina
Stefan’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Stefan’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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