“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.”
―
―
“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.”
― The Book of Disquiet
― The Book of Disquiet
“I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.”
― The Book of Disquiet
― The Book of Disquiet
“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.”
― The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs
― The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs
“If I write what I feel, it's to reduce the fever of feeling. What I confess is unimportant, because everything is unimportant.”
― The Book of Disquiet
― The Book of Disquiet
Cemal’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Cemal’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Polls voted on by Cemal
Lists liked by Cemal









