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"What soothing melancholy is poured into the stroller's heart by the flight of the stone steps inviting him down to the banks of the Seine to loaf there, lost in contemplation of its dark waters! It is a good place, the lower embankment, to take your dreams for a walk. ... As he climbs back up the steps, it is with the feeling that he has laid in a store of memories and is richer by a fresh sadness."

"As a result, there appears to linger, in some of those circular stairwells, a residue of the dreams that they have shattered, a memory of the meditations in which love, lust and world-weariness fought for the hearts of all the nameless people who ever passed that way"

I don't believe I'd be this fond of this book had I not known the war in the home city myself. How does he do it, keep on loving this city even when the phantom of the war hunts the memories of your beloved city? It inadvertently taints all those good memories, the violence streaks the radiance of those days.
"The entire cathedral has been shouting a terrible warning to us all, which we could not hear."

"We all sense at some point the most exquisite smell in the world, at once the freshest and the most immemorial, the most mysterious and the most innocent, the closest to the origins of our plant and the most recent, the smell that moves the heart of a man to the greatest sadness and the greatest gladdness, the odour of damp earth." what a way to capture this all-familiar smell of rain of a summer day?

"A secret city" is one of the most stunning chapters of a literary fiction that I have ever read

p15 Sitting in the lap of the model you intend to paint has never seemed to me to be the ideal position. Step back even a pace and you gain by it. I find it hard to write anything about Paris while I am there: I have to get up and go away. From here, in CPH, I see it very clearly.
p27 Sometimes we do things, without thinking, that make no sense to us until much later. (This is a book about war and longing for home)

There is so much of this book that I want to underline.

"Shout, shout for no reason, for the pleasure of being alive. ... I'll not go chasing after you, little ghost from 1908. Too much has changed for the worse in our city to let me smile at you as cheerfully as I would like"

In the silence of our home on a peaceful January evening, on the first day of the winter holiday that I was finally left alone, I was drifting down the street of Julian Green's Paris.

Just random thoughts I had about la vie as I am reading this book, because my mind wanders: the house is so silent that the absence of the clock in our home is striking, and also so telling of our family disposition.

This book will ruin me, and I will let it, and thank it for the great job it’s done. I can’t read it anymore today, good night

“I’ve made all the wrong choices” - is it too late for me, too?

1. How weird it is to be an 11 year old and discover that you are famous AND to retain your humility
2. The dynamics between the kids is very real and believable

https://youtu.be/6XIPkMFZf-0?si=WJ9ex...

Great read-through!

About martyrdom; one must not make martyrs. Posterity will not vindicate you. Convert the heretic. Make him one of themselves before killing it.

4th dimention is basically a temporal "line"; from either end, it takes long to travel to an oposite one (A to B), BUT! if you "fold" it, create a wrinkle, such that A and B overlap, you just shortened the time needed to travel. Voila, the basics of time travel.

Of pain, you should only wish one thing and that is for it to stop. Nothing was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain, there were no heroes.

This main character is so pathetic, I am sick of him. He thinks himself superior, a hero, a martyr

pirated books on kindle warrior

Something unsettling and exciting about this book; feel like the books I would read as a pre-teen / early teen - I love this feeling

I have tried reading this book a year ago, but back then it didn't really resonate with me. A year into my Columbia adventure, I have succumbed to all of the faulty ways of a non-essentialist - and I trully hope that this book will help me do better next year and into the future by setting up a good system for pursuing only the most valuable experiences.

I am only half way through it, but Stan's story is the scarriest one yet, personally. Bless his soul, this man had his reasons, to be sure

Oh to be a 10 year old with not a worry in the world and play with your buddies. Convinced that the reliance on phones will be our downfall. This book is making me reminisce about the good ol' days of coming up with games and activities to do with friends. TV, IPads and phones were not even part of that conversations. THAT was creative spirit. (Also, I am that girl, I read when I travel, I read at the spin class.)

Whenever I need motivation to write something and put it out there in the world, I will reread the part about Bill @college in the Six Calls - I haven't felt this on fire&inspired.
Bill (and King) write seemingly stories for the sake of stories and scaring, but they achieve so much more and are poignant commentaries on human reality. "Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth" (Albert Camus) indeed.

A few more thoughts before I continue (because I need to put them down SOMEWHERE).
I was stunned by my sudden interest in this book. But then again, the REAL world became such a scary place that I would rather read a horror story as a way of weird escapism.
Prediction: the real monster is PREJUDICE. People prying for each other's weaknesses and soft spots. But loving who you love, being vulnerable, isn't weakness.

Horror is not my genre of choice - in movies or otherwise - but, I saw a compilation of the funny moments from the It movie (2016) (yeeees, Richie and his snarky remarks, thankyouverymuch); tempted, I decided to read the book to prepare myself for watching the movie. But boy oh boy is it GOOD. I am hooked. My first Stephen King book and I love his style of writing (I need to read up more about it). Can't put it down.