Discover new books on Goodreads
Meet your next favorite book

Rafail

Add friend
Sign in to Goodreads to learn more about Rafail.


The Dying Grass
Rate this book
Clear rating

 
Leaves of Grass
Rafail is currently reading
bookshelves: currently-reading
Rate this book
Clear rating

 
The Tale of Genji
Rafail is currently reading
bookshelves: currently-reading
Rate this book
Clear rating

 
See all 4 books that Rafail is reading…
Loading...
David Foster Wallace
“To be, in a word, unborable.... It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish”
David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

David Foster Wallace
“At first you maybe start to like some person on the basis of, you know, features of the person. The way they look, or the way they act, or if they're smart, or some combination or something. So in the beginning it's I guess what you call features of the person that make you feel certain ways about the person. ... But then if you get to where you, you know, love a person, everything sort of reverses. It's not that you love the person because of certain things about the person anymore; it's that you love the things about the person because you love the person. It kind of radiates out, instead of in. At least that's the way ... That's the way it seems to me.”
David Foster Wallace, The Broom of the System
tags: love

William T. Vollmann
“In the preface of "The Rifles"
"Another rule we followed was never kill an animal that we were not going to use for food or clothing." Barnabas Piryuaq
"Well, in those high latitudes we found such quantities of seals and walruses that we simply did not know what to do with them.There were thousands and thousands lying there; we walked among them and hit them on the head, and laughed heartily in the abundance which God had created." Jan Welzi 1933. ”
William T. Vollmann, The Rifles

David Foster Wallace
“Learning how to think" really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.
It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.
Because if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.”
David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

Michel Foucault
“Aren't you sure of what you're saying? Are you going to change yet again, shift your position according to the questions that are put to you, and say that the objections are not really directed at the place from which you are speaking? Are you going to declare yet again that you have never been what you have been reproached with being? Are you already preparing the way out that will enable you in your next book to spring up somewhere else and declare as you're now doing: no, no, I'm not where you are lying in wait for me, but over here, laughing at you?'

'What, do you imagine that I would take so much trouble and so much pleasure in writing, do you think that I would keep so persistently to my task, if I were not preparing – with a rather shaky hand – a labyrinth into which I can venture, into which I can move my discourse, opening up underground passages, forcing it to go far from itself, finding overhangs that reduce and deform its itinerary, in which I can lose myself and appear at last to eyes that I will never have to meet again. I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write.”
Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on Language

82746 William T Vollmann Central — 283 members — last activity Aug 05, 2026 05:36PM
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
year in books
Maria P...
2 books | 30 friends

Xenia T...
3 books | 45 friends

Lydia T...
1 book | 3 friends

Androniki
2 books | 41 friends

Maria P...
2 books | 65 friends

Πίστη Τ...
4 books | 9 friends

Ioanna ...
1 book | 79 friends

Δημητρη...
1 book | 19 friends

More friends…



Polls voted on by Rafail

Lists liked by Rafail