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“When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.”
― The Goldfinch
― The Goldfinch
“A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.”
― The Goldfinch
― The Goldfinch
“What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can’t be trusted—? What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight towards a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster?”
― The Goldfinch
― The Goldfinch
“And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next.”
― The Goldfinch
― The Goldfinch
“Because I don’t care what anyone says or how often or winningly they say it: no one will ever, ever be able to persuade me that life is some awesome, rewarding treat. Because, here’s the truth: life is a catastrophe. The basic fact of existence – of walking around trying to feed ourselves and find friends and whatever else we do – is a catastrophe. Forget all this ridiculous ‘Our Town’ nonsense everyone talks: the miracle of a newborn babe, the joy of one simple blossom, Life You Are Too Wonderful To Grasp, &c. For me – and I’ll keep repeating it doggedly till I die, till I fall over on my ungrateful nihilistic face and am too weak to say it: better never born, than born into this cesspool. Sinkhole of hospital beds, coffins, and broken hearts. No release, no appeal, no “do-overs” to employ a favored phrase of Xandra’s, no way forward but age and loss, and no way out but death.”
― The Goldfinch
― The Goldfinch
The Book Loved By Everyone But You
— 12 members
— last activity Jun 08, 2014 12:10PM
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— last activity Dec 03, 2012 11:07PM
We are a private online based book club. We'll read anything that doesn't involve forced BDSM and sparkling vampires! “We need to make books cool aga ...more
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— last activity May 21, 2015 03:21AM
A social experiment to see if the historical "book club" model can in fact exist in 2015. Open to both fiction and non fiction. ...more
Our Shared Shelf
— 222907 members
— last activity Mar 09, 2026 04:09AM
OUR SHARED SHELF IS CURRENTLY DORMANT AND NOT MANAGED BY EMMA AND HER TEAM. Dear Readers, As part of my work with UN Women, I have started reading ...more
Char’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Char’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
2,937 books
|
124 friends
196 books
|
6 friends
338 books
|
52 friends
565 books
|
78 friends
818 books
|
58 friends
174 books
|
55 friends
106 books
|
17 friends
284 books
|
37 friends
More friends…
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