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“There are no heroes, Tian Haoli. Grand Secretary Shi was both courageous and cowardly, capable and foolish. Wang Xiuchu was both an opportunistic survivor and a man of greatness of spirit. I’m mostly selfish and vain, but sometimes even I surprise myself. We’re all just ordinary men—well, I’m an ordinary demon—faced with extraordinary choices. In those moments, sometimes heroic ideals demand that we become their avatars.”
― The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
― The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
“That feeling in your heart: it’s called mono no aware. It is a sense of the transience of all things in life. The sun, the dandelion, the cicada, the Hammer, and all of us: we are all subject to the equations of James Clerk Maxwell, and we are all ephemeral patterns destined to eventually fade, whether in a second or an eon.”
― The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
― The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
“Judging was the luxury of those who did not need to survive.”
― The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
― The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
“What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.”
― Epistulae Morales Ad Lucilium: Latin Text
― Epistulae Morales Ad Lucilium: Latin Text
“Each time something contingent and impermanent is raised to the status of something necessary and permanent, a devil is created. Whether it be an ego, a nation-state, or a religious belief, the result is the same. The distortion severs such things from their embeddedness in the complexities, fluidities, and ambiguities of the world and make them appear as simple, fixed, and unambiguous entities with the power to condemn or save us.”
― Living with the Devil: A Meditation on Good and Evil
― Living with the Devil: A Meditation on Good and Evil
Zach’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Zach’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
346 books
|
724 friends
238 books
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67 friends
811 books
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143 friends
246 books
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23 friends
49 books
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113 friends
478 books
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48 friends
1,225 books
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182 friends
1,276 books
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16 friends
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Zach
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