Tom > Tom's Quotes

“how little we know about the brain—what Koch calls “by far the most complex piece of organized matter in the known universe.”
― Anonymous

“Without dignity, identity is erased.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“Asked at one point what he had done after the shooting, he replied, “I went home and ate supper.”
― David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

“Denying luck individually is to suggest that we have much greater agency than we really have over outcomes in our lives.” Games give us a chance to confront luck in a manner that allows us to process it in life in a way we’re not always forced to do.”
― Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

“There was something very special, but it wasn't inside Josie. It was inside those who loved her.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun

“The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

“it’s your existence I love you for, mainly. Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined. I’m about to put on imperishability. In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye. The twinkling of an eye. That is the most wonderful expression. I’ve thought from time to time it was the best thing in life, that little incandescence you see in people when the charm of a thing strikes them, or the humor of it. “The light of the eyes rejoiceth the heart.” That’s a fact.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“Obviously, my daily life and the events in my dreams are far apart—as different as a subway and a balloon. And just like everybody else, I’m captive to everyday life, clinging to the humble surface of the earth. Even the most powerful person, or the richest, can’t escape that gravity.”
― Haruki Murakami, The City and Its Uncertain Walls

“The flow of the river became an elaborate maze, and, just as it traveled deep underground, our reality, too, seemed to proceed inside us, branching out down several paths. Different versions of reality mixed together, different choices became intertwined, out of which a composite reality—or, what we come to understand as reality—took shape.”
― Haruki Murakami, The City and Its Uncertain Walls