Emily Eich > Recent Status Updates

Slavoj Zizek on leaving to desire to know oneself—

“The obsessive desire to know yourself is itself a pathology. You're not healed when you wholly understand yourself but when you don't matter to yourself anymore. You're healed once you internalize you must fight for something bigger than yourself…you can finally forget about yourself and work for a greater cause.”

“We knew when it was important to organize one's entire life around nap time and when to acknowledge that a little missed sleep did not portend the crack of doom and it was better to wheel the stroller into a café and have a drink with a girlfriend…Such was the wisdom of the elders.”

this work already means so much to me. it is devastating yet so informative and beautifully written. i cannot stop thinking about how the narrative of men’s right to defend themselves does NOT apply to women, especially women who have been sexually abused their entire lives.

harrowing, sickening, devastating, but so so beautiful.

“Jonáthán appeared to have exhausted all of the words allotted to him. But what were words? All that counted were feelings.”

“An impossible thing to imagine, what might happen if my husband ever paused and thought about the governing law of his own starry universe: his wife might as well have been a farm dog, for all the rights she had. Even the sweetest, stupidest man can grow cruel and cunning when he learns a thing like that.”


CHILLS. this book rocks

"You've got the other too. Listen to me! You wouldn't even be wondering if you didn't have it. Don't you dare take the lazy way. Its too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry. Don't let me catch you doing it Now-look close at me so you will remember. Whatever you do, it will be you who do it—not your mother."

take a shot every time male author writes about the development of a female character by remarking on the size of her breasts

whoops sorry i’m drunk now

“We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.”

yall im dying. trying so hard to finish this book because it is so excellent… but also i can only read about men and cars and trains and land for so long

john steinbeck im begging you to write about a woman please

“And I am a man...that is a very important thing. Maybe even more important than a star. This is not theology, I have no bent towards gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe.”

Lee discussing the Hebrew writings of Genesis with Samuel is some of the most truthful and beautiful writing I’ve read in my life. Wow!

“The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt- and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is.”

“It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking.”

“Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind…A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy-that's the time that seems long in the memory.
Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.”

50 pages in and i already have incredible admiration for this writing. like holy shit

“There was no harassing restraint, no repressing of glee and vivacity with him; for with him I was at perfect ease, because I knew I suited him; all I said or did seemed either to console or revive him. Delightful consciousness! It brought to life and light my whole nature: in his presence I thoroughly lived; and he lived in mine.”

UGHHHH. To love and be loved!!!!! What a tremendous joy of this life!!

“…now zionism had moved into a dark third act—one where ignoble roots must yield noble privilege.”

“But, then, a voice within me averred that I could do it, and foretold that I should do it. I wrestled with my own resolution:
…Conscience, turned tyrant, held Passion by the throat, told her tauntingly, she had yet but dipped her dainty foot in the slough, and swore that with that arm of iron he would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony.”

“To imagine the enslaved as human beings has always been a political act.“

“I pronounced judgment to this effect: That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of life: that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies, and swallowed poison as if it were nectar.”

the best most accurate description of how stupid a crush feels…i get it jane girl

so excited to write a review for this book

TLDR: the count is the goat, vengeance is sweet

tearing through this book! although i don’t think i love books that are historical fiction and 1st person narration, i’m still enjoying the 18th century drama.

Dumas is a legend, his book rocks! truly peak romantic literature!!!!!!!

“Did you think joy was created to live always under that threat?

…Everything becomes more and more itself. Here is joy that cannot be shaken. Our light can swallow up your darkness: but your darkness cannot now infect our light…

…Can you really have thought that love and joy would always be at the mercy of frowns and sighs? Did you not know they were stronger than their opposites?”

WOW WOW WOW!

“Human beings cant make one another really happy for long…He wanted your merely instinctive love for your child (tigresses share that, you know!) to turn into something better. He wanted you to love Michael as He understands love. You cannot love a fellow-creature fully till you love God.”

“Baba’s America…Was a co-worker who said wasn't it so hurtful to be asked where are you really from, and feeling he had no choice but to agree when he felt he truly wouldn't mind, not even after decades of living in America, that he would always like the opening to speak about his city.

The pride of having immigrated was also, in truth, the wound. Didn't they understand that?”

“'But, I tell you, they'll see me.'
'An hour hence and you will not care. A day hence and you will laugh at it. Don't you remember on earth-there were things too hot to touch with your finger but you could drink them all right?
Shame is like that. If you will accept it—if you will drink the cup to the bottom you will find it very nourishing: but try to do anything else with it and it scalds.’"