First Person Singular: Stories
Rate it:
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between October 2 - October 18, 2021
8%
Flag icon
But sometimes, without even realizing it, we trample on people’s feelings, hurt their pride, make them feel bad.
12%
Flag icon
“Things like this happen sometimes in our lives,” I told him. “Inexplicable, illogical events that nevertheless are deeply disturbing. I guess we need to not think about them, just close our eyes and get through them. As if we were passing under a huge wave.”
13%
Flag icon
Your brain is made to think about difficult things. To help you get to a point where you understand something that you didn’t understand at first. And that becomes the cream of your life. The rest is boring and worthless.
30%
Flag icon
The death of a dream can be, in a way, sadder than that of a living being. Sometimes it all seems so unfair.
34%
Flag icon
He’d taught social studies. An ideological impasse was said to be the cause of his suicide. An ideological impasse?
35%
Flag icon
heard it said that the happiest time in our lives is the period when pop songs really mean something to us, really get to us. It may be true. Or maybe not. Pop songs may, after all, be nothing but pop songs. And perhaps our lives are merely decorative, expendable items, a burst of fleeting color and nothing more.
51%
Flag icon
tremblor
67%
Flag icon
In the opening of Anna Karenina, Tolstoy wrote, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” and I think the same applies to women’s faces in terms of beauty or ugliness.
69%
Flag icon
Schumann’s Carnaval, I finally declared. F* narrowed her eyes and gazed at me
70%
Flag icon
Bach’s Goldberg Variations or Well-Tempered Clavier? Beethoven’s late piano sonatas, and his brave, and charming, Third Concerto?
90%
Flag icon
Of course, winning is much better than losing. No argument there. But winning or losing doesn’t affect the weight and value of the time. It’s the same time, either way. A minute is a minute, an hour is an hour. We need to cherish it. We need to deftly reconcile ourselves with time, and leave behind as many precious memories as we can—that’s what’s the most valuable.