“I would love to report that what I found in the prosperity gospel was something so foreign and terrible to me that I was warned away, but what I discovered was both familiar and painfully sweet: the promise that I could curate my life, minimize my losses, and stand on my successes. And no matter how many times I rolled my eyes at the creeds outrageous certainties, I craved them just the same. I had my own Prosperity Gospel, a flowering weed grown in with all the rest.”
― Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved
― Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved
“We are grass, murmur the scriptures. Our crowns are just flowers. We are here and then gone in a burst of wind. But I want things. I want more stories. I want life itself. But am I unfaithful in clinging so tightly to life?”
― No Cure for Being Human: And Other Truths I Need to Hear
― No Cure for Being Human: And Other Truths I Need to Hear
“Were we unusually dependent on one another the summer we swam and watched "Tenko" and went to dinner at Morton's?
Or were we unusually lucky?”
― The Year of Magical Thinking
Or were we unusually lucky?”
― The Year of Magical Thinking
“That message is simple: When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.”
― When Breath Becomes Air
― When Breath Becomes Air
“I realised my life would be full of mundane physical suffering, and that there was nothing special about it. Suffering wouldn't make me special, and pretending not to suffer wouldn't make me special. Talking about it, or even writing about it, would not transform the suffering into something useful.”
― Conversations with Friends
― Conversations with Friends
Curtis’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Curtis’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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