Silver > Recent Status Updates

The quote for this update is all of the imagery from the past five chapters. I can’t possibly fit all of it into one quote that would fit the text limits. Absolute literature of a book.

“To conceive of myself from the outside was my ruin – the ruin of my happiness. I saw myself as others see me, and I despised myself – not because I had character traits that made me worthy of contempt, but because I saw myself through the eyes of others, and felt the contempt they feel towards me.”
Slacking so hard rn

“If we don’t know who he is, neither did he know who he was. He did his duty without knowing what he’d done. He was guided by what makes the roses bloom and the death of leaves beautiful. Life has no better purpose, nor death a better reward.”
I can’t finish this book this week

whoops I had another exam

“…tomorrow I too will be the one who no longer walks these streets, whom others will vaguely evoke with a ‘What’s become of him?’. And everything I’ve done, everything I’ve felt and everything I’ve lived will amount merely to one less passer-by on the everyday streets of some city or other.”
ABSOLUTE LITERATURE.

“When I think, it’s because I’m drifting; when I dream, it’s because I’m awake. Everything I am is tangled up in myself, such that no part of me knows how to be”
I swear to god I’ll read more over the weekend to make up for the lack of reading during my exam week (I won’t)

MAN FUCK FINALS WEEK

“Even while saying that I’m always different, I feel that I’ve always said the same thing; that I resemble myself more than I’d like to admit; that, when the books are balanced, I’ve had neither the joy of winning nor the emotion of losing.”
I want to buy another copy of this book because I love it so much

“No one knew me under the mask of similarity, nor ever knew that I had a mask, because no one knew that there are masked people in the world. No one imagined that at my side there was always another, who was in fact I”
Absolute literature. Half of the things in this book feel ripped straight out of my own head.

I’m pausing all non APUSH related reading until May 8th.

“What to do? Isolate the moment like a thing, and be happy now, in the moment we’re feeling happiness, thinking of nothing but what we’re feeling and completely excluding everything else. Trap all thought in our sensation”
Ive been actively avoiding reading this. I’ve been in a horrible slump since February.

“At this very moment, I’m the one who is attentively writing them…I’m the one thinking about all of this, I’m the one feeling my body satisfied and my hands still a bit cold.“ cut off for space
I’ve thought about this almost one for one before. Scary how close this is to my life

“How can I possess with my body, when I don’t even possess my body? How can I possess with my soul, when I don’t possess my soul? How can I understand with my mind, when I don’t understand my mind?”
This is from an earlier part, but I really liked it.

“The value of art is that it takes us away from here.”
Wow page 300

“I’ve lived in a state of mental slumber, leading the life of someone else. I’ve felt, very often, a vicarious happiness. I haven’t existed. I’ve been someone else. I’ve lived without thinking.”
I guess I’m doing this now. God I love this book so much

“I’ve probably never enjoyed an incorruptible moment, free of any underlying spirit of failure and gloom. In all my moments of spiritual liberation there was a dormant sorrow, vaguely blooming in gardens beyond the walls of my consciousness” Cut off for space
Officially halfway done!

“Anything but to have to struggle with original creation! How I envy those who produce novels, those who begin them and write them and finish them!”
As someone who has tried on multiple occasions to write a novel, yeah.

I should probably stop updating this daily but at the same time I don’t want to stop.

“Art consists in making others feel what we feel, in freeing them from themselves by offering them our own personality. The true substance of whatever I feel is absolutely incommunicable, and the more profoundly I feel it, the more incommunicable it is.”
Also I’m slacking on my reading again lol

I should’ve read The Jungle to study for APUSH exam but it’s too late I’m already reading two books. I did horribly on my Gilded Age test I definitely should’ve

This book is officially the oldest on my shelf. The edition I have is from 1935. It may not be the best translation but it is 91 years old.

idk if this was the best book to read right before I have a shit ton of exams but it’s not like I’ll drop it because of that

“I constantly feel that I was someone different, that a different I felt, that a different I thought. I’m watching a play with a different, unfamiliar setting, and what I’m watching is me.”

Lots of slacking on my part. I’ve been doing other stuff at night instead of reading (watching music videos of my favorite bands on repeat while thinking about the fact I could be reading right now)

“Who am I behind this unreality? I don’t know. I must be someone… I want to be exactly like what I wanted to be and am not. If I were to give in to life, I’d be destroyed. I want to be a work of art, at least in my soul, since I can’t be one in my body.”
Shortened for character limit

This book is in a weird limbo of being both a slog to get through and really, really good.

I impulsively bought two books even though I have no room for them. I got Cloud Cuckoo Land (Goodwill) and Diary of an Oxygen Thief (eBay)