Commonplace Book
Collected ephemera and words that are beloved to me.
Quotes
Lucas is happy. This is a very provoking thing to the world. Because people aren’t supposed to be happy, they’re only supposed to want to be happy, because how otherwise are you supposed to be able to sell things to them?
– Frederik Backman (The Answer is No)
The ultimate gated community is a human being with a closed mind.
– J.G. Ballard (Super-Cannes)
I couldn’t see the value of life anymore. I couldn’t seem to fit in, at home or at school. I just withdrew into myself and closed everything else out. I was overly self-conscious, I had too many ideals and ambitions for one person, and because of that, I ended up without a single one I could hold on to. I was an empty person. That’s what I was. It seemed like there was absolutely nowhere I belonged in this world.
– Satoshi Yagisawa (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop)
“How in hell is anybody supposed to help you if you won’t ask?” Because asking is dangerous, I could tell her. Because to ask is to hope that someone answers, and it hurts so bad when nobody does.
– Alix E. Harrow (Starling House)
I’d been tired of it a decade ago. Now I’d moved to some other state entirely. Transcendent exhaustion, perhaps.
– T. Kingfisher (What Moves the Dead)
People get hung up on happiness and joy, but fun will take you at least as far and it’s generally cheaper to obtain.
– T. Kingfisher (What Moves the Dead)
She’d hoped to outlive tears, move beyond them to an arid landscape where they never flowed.
– Laura Purcell (The Silent Companions)
The show is filled with worlds built by children so it seems absurd to adults, but that's because they've stopped being able to see the absurdity of the world they've built for themselves.
– Kiersten White (Mister Magic)
In fact, it’s Douggie’s growing conviction that the greatest flaw of the species is its overwhelming tendency to mistake agreement for truth.
– Richard Powers (The Overstory)
Time was not a line unrolling in front of her. It was a column of concentric circles with herself at the core and the present floating outward along the outermost rim. Future selves stacked up above and behind her, all returning to this room for another look at the handful of men who had solved life.
– Richard Powers (The Overstory)
We read to know we’re not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone.
– Gabrielle Zevin (The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry)
It’s my motto for life. ‘Walk slowly; drink lots of water’.
– Haruki Murakami (After Dark)
Sharing things is how things get started, and not sharing things is how they end.
– Rachel Khong (Goodbye, Vitamin)
We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable —
but then, so did the divine right of kings.
– Ursula K. Le Guin
Man mistakes his own experiences as the canvas on which all truths are drawn.
He is rarely correct in this respect.
– Cassandra Khaw (The Salt Grows Heavy)
He was afraid, one way or another, of the voice that beats in your lungs, your
hurricane scream. You frightened him. How men fear things that can't be quieted.
– Cassandra Khaw (The Salt Grows Heavy)
Amiko searched for words. Anything to say to those eyes. She wanted to be kind.
But the more she wanted to be kind, the sadder she got. She couldn't find the words.
She couldn't say a word.
– Natsuko Imamura (This is Amiko, Do you Copy?)
I really enjoy the ebb and flow of consuming and creating, and think it's unhealthy
to go too far in either direction. Consuming too much media makes me feel stagnant, and
excessive creative output makes me feel depleted and exhausted. Balance is always the key,
isn't it?
– Cosmic Spectrum (Prism)
Today, love is being positivized into a formula for enjoyment. Above all, love
is supposed to generate pleasant feelings. It no longer represents plot, narration, or
drama—only inconsequential emotion and arousal.
– Byung Chul Han (The Agony of Eros)
To reduce or shortcut the intimacy of the body’s involvement in the making of a work
of art (that is, of any artifice, anything made by art) inevitably risks reducing the work
of art and the art itself.
– Wendell Berry (Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer)
We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep on humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. Marxism. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information.
– Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)
It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.
– Ursula K. Le Guin (A Wizard of Earthsea)
I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.
– L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)
When the girl returned, some hours later, she carried a tray, with a cup of fragrant tea
steaming on it; and a plate piled up with very hot buttered toast, cut thick, very brown on
both sides, with the butter running through the holes in great golden drops, like honey
from the honeycomb. The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no
uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy
parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one's ramble was over and slippered feet were propped
on the fender, of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries.
– Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows)
When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment?
– Muriel Barberry (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)
Assuming that because a person is sixty she doesn’t understand location services is
ageist bullshit.
– Deanna Raybourn (Killers of a Certain Age)
Alexander Wainwright was a tall, handsome man in his late forties. He was, Stormgren knew,
completely honest, and therefore doubly dangerous.
Arthur C. Clark (Childhood's End)
When you are wrestling for possession of a sword, the man with the handle always wins.
– Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)