208 ratings (3.59 avg)
80 reviews

Rachel

Add friend

Rachel’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (181)
currently-reading‎ (0)

read‎ (207)
academic‎ (22)

memoir‎ (17)
favorites‎ (14)

read-me-this-summer‎ (6)
short-stories‎ (4)

Stats | More…

“Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”
― Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor

tags: illness, metaphor

260 likes

“People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all—a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named—but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

36 likes