Joshua Baker

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Rebecca West
“Were I to go down into the market-place, armed with the powers of witchcraft, and take a peasant by the shoulders and whisper to him, 'In your lifetime, have you known peace?' wait for his answer, shake his shoulders and transform him into his father, and ask him the same question, and transform him in his turn to his father, I would never hear the word 'Yes,' if I carried my questioning of the dead back for a thousand years. I would always hear, 'No, there was fear, there were our enemies without, our rulers within, there was prison, there was torture, there was violent death.”
Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

Stendhal
“The ordinary procedure of the nineteenth century is that when a powerful and noble personage encounters a man of feeling, he kills, exiles, imprisons or so humiliates him that the other, like a fool, dies of grief.”
Stendhal, The Red and the Black

David Foster Wallace
“To be, in a word, unborable.... It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish”
David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

David Foster Wallace
“The truth is that the heroism of your childhood entertainments was not true valor. It was theatre. The grand gesture, the moment of choice, the mortal danger, the external foe, the climactic battle whose outcome resolves all--all designed to appear heroic, to excite and gratify and audience. Gentlemen, welcome to the world of reality--there is no audience. No one to applaud, to admire. No one to see you. Do you understand? Here is the truth--actual heroism receives no ovation, entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No one is interested.”
David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

Gore Vidal
“How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself.”
Gore Vidal, Julian

year in books
Elle Mc...
192 books | 35 friends

Erica Pye
608 books | 125 friends

Dash
236 books | 27 friends

Morgan ...
279 books | 18 friends

Kelsey ...
1,436 books | 221 friends

Ashley
2,838 books | 39 friends

Melody
679 books | 5 friends

Devin
436 books | 18 friends

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