“That's why I like listening to Schubert while I'm driving. Like I said, it's because all his performances are imperfect. A dense, artistic kind of imperfection stimulates your consciousness, keeps you alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I'm driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of - that a certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. And personally I find that encouraging.”
― Kafka on the Shore
― Kafka on the Shore
“I'll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn't carry us. There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore.”
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”
― Travels with Charley: In Search of America
― Travels with Charley: In Search of America
“If you think God’s there, He is. If you don’t, He isn’t. And if that’s what God’s like, I wouldn’t worry about it.”
― Kafka on the Shore
― Kafka on the Shore
“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.”
― East of Eden
― East of Eden
Shirley’s 2025 Year in Books
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