Oliver > Recent Status Updates

I love this line about a Mexican ballad or "corrido":

"[The corrido] tells what it wishes to tell. It tells what makes the story run. The corrido is a poor man's history. It does not owe allegiance to the truths of history but to the truths of men."

I'll be thinking of this next time I hear a spun tale on the news. You spout nothing but a corrido! A tale designed to tell the story you want to tell.

"... most men were in their lives like the carpenter whose work went so slowly for the dullness of his tools that he had not time to sharpen them."

"The road has its own reasons and no two travelers will have the same understanding of those reasons."

"... we long for something of substance to oppose us. Something to contain us or to stay our hand. Otherwise there are no boundaries to our own being and we too must extend our claims until we lose all definition."

"... and the world cannot lose it."

😭😢 so much emotion

HOLY SHIT, WHAAAAT?! 😱

"Often I feel like talking to [my sister and brother in law] is like making conversation with... a blank Facebook profile." Buuurrrrn 😆

But also makes me wonder if I'm the same 🥺 am I a blank Facebook profile in conversation?

"Awards in this industry are... less a marker of prestige or literary quality and more an indication that you've won a popularity contest with a very small, skewed group of voters."

Omfg that was intense

Okay, so... first off, I am LOVING this book. Great pace, interesting science, funny.

Spoiler alert...

But I think I've hit a pretty major plot hole...

if the Iridians live in temperatures hotter than the boiling point of water, wouldn't the solder melt? I mean, it depends how much hotter they need, but the book makes it out like it's "waaay hotter".

OMG NO!

Okay, so, I'm on chapter four and Missy/Taylor still hasn't taken Turtle to the police... what's going on? 😆

"It is fashionable among intellectuals and sophisticates to scoff at true love - to pretend it is nothing but a sweet fairy tale sold to children and young women, to be taken as seriously as magic wands or glass slippers. I feel nothing but pity for these learned persons, because they would not say such foolish things if they had ever experienced love for themselves."

"There is, of course, no such thing as a fallen woman... social rules are simultaneously rigid and arbitrary. It is impermissible to engage in physical love before binding legal marriage, unless one is a young man of means. Men must be bold and assertive, but only if they are light-skinned. Any persons may fall in love regardless of station, but only if one is a woman and the other a man... such faulty borders."

"It's a profoundly strange feeling, to stumble across someone whose desires are shaped so closely to your own, like reaching toward your reflection in a mirror and finding warm flesh under your fingertips. If you should ever be lucky enough to find that magical, fearful symmetry, I hope you're brave enough to grab it with both hands and not let go."

And everywhere the vacant empty faces of once angry men

Don't know why I read these. Every story just makes me think Gaiman is a creepy sex offender.

Paraphrasing: those who follow the standard way of things are the master of those who would master the future.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SouthernReac...

"... some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough."

"... all of us are, often enough, pretty much crazy."

... we didn't think to look for more sets of boot prints.

🙈

"Do you need me to calm you?" the psychologist asked.

DNF. I have reached my limit.

What is this book even about? Nothing happens. It's all very fancy, and very empty.

"... the Faithful Departed giggle at our miscalculations. The dead are magnified in our eyes, while we to them appear as ants."

"Not enough beer and horseradish! No wonder you're sick!"