

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
―
―

“It was war, and in war the truth was almost always the first casualty.”
― Executive Power
― Executive Power

“Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.”
―
―

“Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level.”
― The Denial of Death
― The Denial of Death
Abdelkader’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Abdelkader’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Art, Business, Classics, Crime, Fiction, History, Mystery, Non-fiction, Philosophy, Poetry, Psychology, Romance, Science, Science fiction, Thriller, and Psychoanalysis
Polls voted on by Abdelkader
Lists liked by Abdelkader