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Samra Yusuf

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Samra’s Bookshelves

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historical-fiction‎ (28)
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existentialism-philosophy‎ (9)
russian-literature‎ (7)
poetry‎ (6)
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“I yearn for empty thoughts and silence in my head. For someone to sit down beside me, to hold my hand and take away the cold sting of loneliness that creeps under my skin like an English winter.”
― Malia Zaidi, A Poisonous Journey

32 likes

“Beneath me lay the Lake of Oblivion, above me loomed Insanity.”
― Walter Moers, The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear

12 likes

“How she loved to listen when he thought only the horse could hear.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

15 likes

“I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.”
― Gerard Manley Hopkins, Delphi Complete Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins

tags: darkness, poetry

8 likes

“There is a Do this or Do that with God, but not any Because.”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

12 likes

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Samra’s Groups

Existential Book Club — 1473 members — last activity Dec 21, 2025 02:39PM
This a book club for anybody interested in reading existentialist literature and fiction. Every month I'll be putting up a new text either by an exist ...more

100 books to read before you die — 1003 members — last activity Sep 20, 2025 02:39PM
The BBC has a list of 100 books that they think everyone should read before they die; however they predict that most people will only read 6! This gro ...more

Philosophy — 5770 members — last activity Dec 26, 2025 10:46AM
What is Philosophy? Why is it important? How do you use it? This group looks at these questions and others: ethics, government, economics, skepticism, ...more

¡ POETRY ! — 22582 members — last activity Dec 24, 2025 01:37PM
No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read it!) Goodreads honors wordsmiths: poets and poetry promoted and prompted here. ~~~ "Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits." -- Carl Sandburg “God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.” —Anne Sexton On Clouds – “…what primitive tastes the ancients must have had if their poets were inspired by those absurd, untidy clumps of mist, idiotically jostling one another about…” —Yevgeny Zamyatin “If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn’t wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.” —Donald Hall “Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.” —Boris Pasternak “Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.” —Charles Simic “Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.” —Gustave Flaubert “Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.” —Allen Ginsberg. ~~~~~ Amy King, Moderator Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the WNBA Award (Women’s National Book Association). Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She serves on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is co-editing with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology, Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She is also co-editing the anthology, Bettering American Poetry 2015, and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College. ...more