132 books
—
2,206 voters
Kelsey
https://www.goodreads.com/kelsey_z
My love for my father swelled in my heart, and I realized that, despite the hopelessness of my situation, the memory of him filled me with joy. It staggered me: The mountains, for all their power, were not stronger than my attachment to my
...more
Liong and 4 other people liked this
“Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience. Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it or quash it or silence it, only backfires. The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering. The avoidance of struggle is a struggle. The denial of failure is a failure. Hiding what is shameful is itself a form of shame.
Pain is an inextricable thread in the fabric of life, and to tear it out is not only impossible, but destructive: attempting to tear it out unravels everything else with it. To try to avoid pain is to give too many fucks about pain. In contrast, if you’re able to not give a fuck about the pain, you become unstoppable." ~~~~ Mark Manson”
― The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
Pain is an inextricable thread in the fabric of life, and to tear it out is not only impossible, but destructive: attempting to tear it out unravels everything else with it. To try to avoid pain is to give too many fucks about pain. In contrast, if you’re able to not give a fuck about the pain, you become unstoppable." ~~~~ Mark Manson”
― The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“I'm not afraid of God. I'm afraid of man.”
― Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
― Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
“You see I want to be quite obstinate about insisting that we have no way of knowing—beyond that fundamental loyalty to the social code—what is “right” and what is “wrong,” what is “good” and what “evil.” I dwell so upon this because the most disturbing aspect of “morality” seems to me to be the frequency with which the word now appears; in the press, on television, in the most perfunctory kinds of conversation. Questions of straightforward power (or survival) politics, questions of quite indifferent public policy, questions of almost anything: they are all assigned these factitious moral burdens. There is something facile going on, some self-indulgence at work. Of course we would all like to “believe” in something, like to assuage our private guilts in public causes, like to lose our tiresome selves; like, perhaps, to transform the white flag of defeat at home into the brave white banner of battle away from home. And of course it is all right to do that; that is how, immemorially, things have gotten done. But I think it is all right only so long as we do not delude ourselves about what we are doing, and why. It is all right only so long as we remember that all the ad hoc committees, all the picket lines, all the brave signatures in The New York Times, all the tools of agitprop straight across the spectrum, do not confer upon anyone any ipso facto virtue. It is all right only so long as we recognize that the end may or may not be expedient, may or may not be a good idea, but in any case has nothing to do with “morality.” Because when we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble. And I suspect we are already there.”
― Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays
― Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays
“Is there anything more frightening than people?”
― Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
― Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
“Everything you do leaves traces, doesn’t it. The life you’ve lived is written all over you, for those who can read.”
― Flaggermusmannen
― Flaggermusmannen
Kelsey’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Kelsey’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Kelsey
Lists liked by Kelsey


































































