Travis J. Coner

“The past is a distant, receding coastline, and we are all in the same boat. Along the stern rail there is a line of telescopes; each brings the shore into focus at a given distance. If the boat is becalmed, one of the telescopes will be in continual use; it will seem to tell the whole, the unchanging truth. But this is an illusion; and as the boat sets off again, we return to our normal activity: scurrying from one telescope to another, seeing the sharpness fade in one, waiting for the blur to clear in another. And when the blur does clear, we imagine that we have made it do so all by ourselves.”
― Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

“The whole dream of democracy,’ he wrote, ‘is to raise the proletariat to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeoisie.”
― Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

“The Afterlife is filled with the heavenly scent of musty books. Its walls are lined with tall bookshelves full of forgotten tomes. In this cozy mezzanine between worlds, there are no windows nor clocks, though an occasional echo of children’s laughter or whiff of a chocolate croissant wafts in from the ground floor.”
― Janet Skeslien Charles, The Paris Library

“It seems to me that your sense of other people’s awfulness might be compensating for your own sense of inferiority and fear of rejection. You rationalize the rejection of your peers by telling yourself it comes from other people’s deficiencies rather than your own. They can’t understand your philosophy or your ideas.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot