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“It was when he tried to talk about 'the boat' that his words began to falter and tears welled up in his eyes...Finally, watching Joe struggle for composure over and over, I realized that 'the boat' was something more than just the shell or its crew. To Joe, it encompassed but transcended both - it was something mysterious and almost beyond definition. It was a shared experience - a singular thing that had unfolded in a golden sliver of time long gone, when nine good-hearted young men strove together, pulled together as one, gave everything they had for one another, bound together forever by pride and respect and love. Joe was crying, at least in part, for the loss of that vanished moment but much more, I think, for the sheer beauty of it.”
― The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics
― The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics
“O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."
Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.”
― Hamlet
Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.”
― Hamlet
“Why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn’t it even better? It was two people who remained together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified.”
― A Little Life
― A Little Life
“...when your child dies, you feel everything you'd expect to feel, feelings so well-documented by so many others that I won't even bother to list them here, except to say that everything that's written about mourning is all the same, and it's all the same for a reason - because there is no read deviation from the text. Sometimes you feel more of one thing and less of another, and sometimes you feel them out of order, and sometimes you feel them for a longer time or a shorter time. But the sensations are always the same.
But here's what no one says - when it's your child, a part of you, a very tiny but nonetheless unignorable part of you, also feels relief. Because finally, the moment you have been expecting, been dreading, been preparing yourself for since the day you became a parent, has come.
Ah, you tell yourself, it's arrived. Here it is.
And after that, you have nothing to fear again.”
― A Little Life
But here's what no one says - when it's your child, a part of you, a very tiny but nonetheless unignorable part of you, also feels relief. Because finally, the moment you have been expecting, been dreading, been preparing yourself for since the day you became a parent, has come.
Ah, you tell yourself, it's arrived. Here it is.
And after that, you have nothing to fear again.”
― A Little Life
Gretta’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Gretta’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
820 books
|
32 friends
3,478 books
|
202 friends
345 books
|
29 friends
235 books
|
43 friends
1,027 books
|
86 friends
261 books
|
21 friends
459 books
|
101 friends
200 books
|
17 friends
More friends…
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