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In our families, we can rise above the shame of having an alcoholic father by adding fuel secretly to our grandiose rocket, pulling away from the family, riding upward on that fuel. Or we can sink down into the shamed child, become him, be
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“Travel brings wisdom only to the wise. It renders the ignorant more ignorant than ever.”
― Last Argument of Kings
― Last Argument of Kings
“Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I'd lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people's deaths or a mother's love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we're all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? Couldn't he see, couldn't he see that? Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too.”
― The Stranger
― The Stranger
“In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment.”
― The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
― The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
“Proof is boring. Proof is tiresome. Proof is an irrelevance. People would far rather be handed an easy lie than search for a difficult truth, especially if it suits their own purposes.”
― Last Argument of Kings
― Last Argument of Kings
“People with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called *character,* a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to the other, more instantly negotiable virtues.... character--the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life--is the source from which self-respect springs.”
― Slouching Towards Bethlehem
― Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Lucian’s 2024 Year in Books
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