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Michael Allen
https://www.goodreads.com/allenmf
“Every soul is vast and wants to express itself fully. If it’s denied an adequate instrument (and we’re all denied that, at birth, some more than others), out comes…poetry, i.e., truth forced out through a restricted opening. That’s all poetry is, really: something odd, coming out. Normal speech, overflowed. A failed attempt to do justice to the world. The poet proves that language is inadequate by throwing herself at the fence of language and being bound by it. Poetry is the resultant bulging of the fence.”
― A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
― A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
“Only the wounded physician heals... and then only to the extent he has healed himself.”
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“In a society in which the dream of success has been drained of any meaning beyond itself, men have nothing against which to measure their achievements except the achievements of others.”
― The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations
― The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations
“Let the youthful soul look back on life with the question: what have you truly loved up to now, what has elevated your soul, what has mastered it and at the same time delighted it? Place these venerated objects before you in a row, and perhaps they will yield for you, through their nature and their sequence, a law, the fundamental law of your true self…for your true nature lies, not hidden deep within you, but immeasurably high above you, or at least above that which you normally take to be yourself.”
― Untimely Meditations
― Untimely Meditations
“How can man know himself? He is a dark and veiled thing; and whereas the hare has seven skins, the human being can shed seven times 70 skins and still not be able to say: ‘This is really you, this is no longer an outer shell. Besides, it is an agonizing, dangerous undertaking to dig down into yourself in this way, to force your way by the shortest route down the shaft of your own being. How easy it is to do damage to yourself that no doctor can heal. And moreover, why should it be necessary, since everything – our friendships and hatreds, the way we look, our handshakes, the things we remember and forget, our books, our handwriting – bears witness to our being.”
― Untimely Meditations
― Untimely Meditations
Michael’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Michael’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
841 books
|
175 friends
732 books
|
336 friends
134 books
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32 friends
557 books
|
5 friends
83 books
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8 friends
6 books
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109 friends
418 books
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76 friends
116 books
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72 friends
More friends…
Favorite Genres
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