“True literature can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics.”
― A Soviet Heretic: Essays
― A Soviet Heretic: Essays
“He became a seeker of crowds, but the crowds thinned and abandoned him. He became a seeker of lights, but the lights grew strange and led him into desolate places.”
― Noctuary
― Noctuary
“He raised both his arms in his peculiar hieratic way, a way in which I knew now that there was something deliberately, not fortuitously, symbolic. The dark figure on the raised white terrace; legate of the sun facing the sun; the most ancient royal power. He appeared, wished to appear, to survey, to bless, to command; dominus and domaine.”
― The Magus
― The Magus
“Where do you get your ideas from, Ms Le Guin?” From forgetting Dostoyevsky and reading road signs backwards, naturally. Where else?”
― The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
― The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
“Alas, how terrible is wisdom
when it brings no profit to the man that's wise!
This I knew well, but had forgotten it,
else I would not have come here.”
― Oedipus Rex
when it brings no profit to the man that's wise!
This I knew well, but had forgotten it,
else I would not have come here.”
― Oedipus Rex
Stian’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Stian’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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