“And as much as I’d like to believe there’s a truth beyond illusion, I’ve come to believe that there’s no truth beyond illusion. Because, between ‘reality’ on the one hand, and the point where the mind strikes reality, there’s a middle zone, a rainbow edge where beauty comes into being, where two very different surfaces mingle and blur to provide what life does not: and this is the space where all art exists, and all magic.”
― The Goldfinch
― The Goldfinch
“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong”
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“You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.”
― The Goldfinch
― The Goldfinch
“The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. Books are written by the alone for the alone.”
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“To correct a natural indifference, I was placed halfway between poverty and the sun. Poverty kept me from thinking all was well under the sun and in history; the sun taught me that history was not everything.”
― Lyrical and Critical Essays
― Lyrical and Critical Essays
SUS Book Club
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— last activity Oct 05, 2018 08:23AM
For the Sustainable Urban Systems Initiative community of readers.
Derek’s 2025 Year in Books
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