“I don’t understand you.” “You think I’m drunk?” “Not drunk, worse than that.” “I’m drunk in spirit, Pyotr Ilyich, drunk in spirit, and enough, enough…” “What are you doing, loading the pistol?” “Loading the pistol.”
“Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home.”
― Giovanni’s Room
― Giovanni’s Room
“And so it goes...”
― Slaughterhouse-Five
― Slaughterhouse-Five
“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”
― The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
― The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
“Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.”
― The Left Hand of Darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.”
― The Left Hand of Darkness
“But it's a poor fellow who can't take his pleasure without asking other people's permission.”
― Steppenwolf
― Steppenwolf
Robert’s 2025 Year in Books
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