Sign in with Facebook
499 books
—
35 voters
“I cannot recall the words of my first poem but I remember a promise I made my pen never to leave it lying in somebody else's blood.”
― Our Dead Behind Us: Poems
― Our Dead Behind Us: Poems
“And I think I’ve found the real benefit of digital memory. The point is not to prove you were right; the point is to admit you were wrong.
Because all of us have been wrong on various occasions, engaged in cruelty and hypocrisy, and we’ve forgotten most of those occasions. And that means we don’t really know ourselves. How much personal insight can I claim if I can’t trust my memory? How much can you? You’re probably thinking that, while your memory isn’t perfect, you’ve never engaged in revisionism of the magnitude I’m guilty of. But I was just as certain as you, and I was wrong. You may say, "I know I'm not perfect. I've made mistakes." I am here to tell you that you have made more than you think, that some of the core assumptions on which your self-image is built are actually lies.”
― The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling
Because all of us have been wrong on various occasions, engaged in cruelty and hypocrisy, and we’ve forgotten most of those occasions. And that means we don’t really know ourselves. How much personal insight can I claim if I can’t trust my memory? How much can you? You’re probably thinking that, while your memory isn’t perfect, you’ve never engaged in revisionism of the magnitude I’m guilty of. But I was just as certain as you, and I was wrong. You may say, "I know I'm not perfect. I've made mistakes." I am here to tell you that you have made more than you think, that some of the core assumptions on which your self-image is built are actually lies.”
― The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling
“You know what, sometimes it seems to me we're living in a world that we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what's good and what isn't, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves... And then we spend our whole lives struggling with what we have invented for ourselves. The problem is that each of us has our own version of it, so people find it hard to understand each other.”
― Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
― Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
“Human activity has brought my kind to the brink of extinction, but I don’t blame them for it. They didn’t do it maliciously. They just weren’t paying attention. And humans create such beautiful myths; what imaginations they have. Perhaps that’s why their aspirations are so immense. Look at Arecibo. Any species who can build such a thing must have greatness within them. My species probably won’t be here for much longer; it’s likely that we’ll die before our time and join the Great Silence. But before we go, we are sending a message to humanity. We just hope the telescope at Arecibo will enable them to hear it. The message is this: You be good. I love you.”
― The Great Silence
― The Great Silence
“As his hands fell upon the keyboard, it was still possible to believe a beautiful harmony had been formed at random, in spite of him. But a second later the music came surging out, the power of it sweeping away all doubts, voices, sounds, wiping away the fixed grins and exchanged glances, pushing back the walls, dispersing the light of the reception room out into the nocturnal immensity of the sky beyond the windows.
He did not feel as if he were playing. He was advancing through a night, breathing in its delicate transparency, made up as it was of an infinite number of facets of ice, of leaves, of wind. He no longer felt any pain. No fear about what would happen. No anguish or remorse. The night through which he was advancing expressed this pain, this fear, and the irremediable shattering of the past, but this had all become music and now only existed through its beauty.”
― Music of a Life
He did not feel as if he were playing. He was advancing through a night, breathing in its delicate transparency, made up as it was of an infinite number of facets of ice, of leaves, of wind. He no longer felt any pain. No fear about what would happen. No anguish or remorse. The night through which he was advancing expressed this pain, this fear, and the irremediable shattering of the past, but this had all become music and now only existed through its beauty.”
― Music of a Life
All About Books
— 3811 members
— last activity 1 hour, 12 min ago
We're here because we like reading and we like chatting about reading. But we are here especially because we strongly believe that reading is not just ...more
Shine & Shadow
— 804 members
— last activity 6 hours, 33 min ago
Welcome to Shine & Shadow. We are a group focused on monthly group reads and discussions. We have 3 group reads on a rotating monthly basis: 1 'Dark' ...more
Dragons & Jetpacks
— 2571 members
— last activity 1 hour, 54 min ago
A book group for all those who love sci-fi and fantasy. We read three books per month, one from each genre, plus a carefully curated moderators specia ...more
Catching up on Classics (and lots more!)
— 16343 members
— last activity 31 minutes ago
The world is made up of two kinds of people: first, those who love classics, and second, those who have not yet read a classic. Be bold and join us as ...more
21st Century Literature
— 3673 members
— last activity 4 minutes ago
We read literary fiction from 2000 to present, with the intent of finding those literary gems of timeless and enduring quality. We're less focused o ...more
Greg’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Greg’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
2,361 books
|
208 friends
292 books
|
348 friends
2,019 books
|
765 friends
5,399 books
|
295 friends
6,670 books
|
596 friends
2,002 books
|
33 friends
1,359 books
|
429 friends
10,136 books
|
735 friends
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Art, Chick-lit, Children's, Christian, Classics, Comics, Contemporary, Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Gay and Lesbian, Graphic novels, Historical fiction, Horror, Humor and Comedy, Memoir, Mystery, Paranormal, Philosophy, Poetry, Psychology, Religion, Science, Science fiction, Suspense, Spirituality, Thriller, and Young-adult
Polls voted on by Greg
Lists liked by Greg
