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Vanitha Narayan

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“From the bottom of my heart I desired to surrender myself to the sleep of oblivion. If only oblivion were attainable, if it could last forever, if my eyes as they closed could gently transcend sleep and dissolve into non-being and I should lose consciousness of my existence for all time to come, if it were possible for my being to dissolve in one drop of ink, in one bar of music, in one ray of colored light, and then these waves and forms were to grow and grow to such infinite size that in the end they faded and disappeared—then I should have attained my desire.”
― Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

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“My one fear is that tomorrow I may die without having come to know myself”
― Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

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“By interpreting freedom as the propagation and immediate gratification of needs, people distort their own nature, for they engender in themselves a multitude of pointless and foolish desires, habits, and incongruous stratagems. Their lives are motivated only by mutual envy, sensuality, and ostentation. To give dinner-parties, to travel, to have carriages, titles, and slavishly devoted servants is considered such a necessity that, in order to satisfy this need, people will even sacrifice their lives, honour, and sense of humanity, and if they cannot satisfy it, they will even commit suicide.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

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“It is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it... that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it...To love is good, too: love being difficult.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

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“As a psychologist I am deeply interested in mental disturbances, particularly when they infect whole nations. I want to emphasize that I despise politics wholeheartedly: thus I am neither a Bolshevik, nor a National Socialist, nor an Anti-Semite. I am a neutral Swiss and even in my own country I am uninterested in politics, because I am convinced that 99 per cent of politics are mere symptoms and anything but a cure for social evils. About 50 per cent of politics is definitely obnoxious inasmuch as it poisons the utterly incompetent mind of the masses. We are on guard against contagious diseases of the body, but we are exasperatingly careless when it comes to the even more dangerous collective diseases of the mind.”
― C.G. Jung, The Symbolic Life: Miscellaneous Writings

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Vanitha’s Groups

Animal Farm Readalong #AnimalFarmReadalong — 305 members — last activity Mar 30, 2022 08:08AM
This January, I will be hosting a readalong of George Orwell's classic Animal Farm. Please do join in if you would like to read this book or learn a b ...more

Of Mice and Men Readalong #OfMiceAndMenReadalong — 258 members — last activity Jun 06, 2022 04:50AM
This April, I will be hosting a readalong of John Steinbeck's classic Of Mice and Men. Please do join in if you would like to read this book or learn ...more

The book you like most — 49511 members — last activity 1 hour, 30 min ago
This group (ranked in the TOP 100 most popular groups on Goodreads) is dedicated to the "Vision and Story" project. Additionally, the group THE BOOK ...more

Children books — 130 members — last activity Mar 13, 2025 01:28AM
Hey everyone! I’ve created a new group called Booktok & Bookstagram for book lovers who enjoy talking about books, sharing recommendations, and making ...more