Didier Vanoverbeke > Recent Status Updates

10

Nooit gedacht dat deze nou dingen naar de prijs voor (mijn) boek van het jaar!

Here we go bay-beeeeee!

Voorgelezen door Walter Zinzen? Nou nou.

https://youtu.be/l4QEFLhlh-Y

Did Goodreads b0rk their app update or...?

Settling in for a Mann binge

Just wondering whether this obsessive use of quotations was the norm at the time.

Out of these crumbs comes the sponge cake.

I can’t wait for the end of awards season on goodreads

You can’t help but hurt.

An ode to a solid dump.

Writers know nothing. That’s why they still insist on writing.

Ashes where once there was fire...

“Good fiction, if we know how to take advantage of it, is an instruction manual for our own non-fiction.”

Chemical solaces behave like the lightbulbs in certain small hotels: they are regulated to remain burning just long enough for you to climb the steps to the floor above. But sometimes they go out when you are halfway up the stairs, and you find yourself left there like a fool, groping in the darkness.

"T
hree weeks ago, I was strolling around São Paulo, when a friend – Edinho – handed me a pamphlet entitled Sacred Moment. Printed in four colours, on excellent paper, with no mention of any particular church or religion, this pamphlet bore only a prayer on its reverse side.
Imagine my surprise when I saw the name of the author of this prayer – ME!"
How is it that I am not surprised?

"That is why, whenever you feel uncomfortable in that correct posture, you should not think that it is false or artificial. It is true because it is difficult. It makes the path feel honoured by the dignity of the pilgrim.
And please do not confuse it with arrogance or snobbery."
But you do make it oh so difficult, Paulo dearest.

"I’ve witnessed violence in the four corners of the world. I remember once, in Lebanon, immediately after the devastating war there, I was walking amongst the ruins of Beirut with a friend, Söula Saad. She told me that her city had now been destroyed seven times. I asked, jokingly, why they didn’t give up rebuilding it and move somewhere else."
Yeah, j/k!"

"I work for several hours, because that is my choice, because that is my personal legend, because a warrior of light knows that he has duties and responsibilities.
Man, this is gonna be a hoot and a half."

I rather love how this book is basically one extended, twisted infomercial. For now.

I am having way too much not-so-innocent fun reading this.

In the meantime, I learn that I’m going to be a father, then that I am: the child was born, I wasn’t even told.
I walk down a long hallway, trying to think of a suitable name: it needs to be very short (like Jorg’) or very long. Didier, for instance, would not work.

A surprising amount of exclamation marks.

The writer, and that was what I was becoming, must be wary of every Dream and every nation, even his own nation. Perhaps his own nation more than any other, precisely because it was his own.

I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free.