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His ability to get along with everyone: sharing his company was the highest of compliments, and the opportunity an honor for those around him.
Earlier this week, I began saving a quote a day from each chapter of the Meditations in my online journal and then commenting on it. This was the first quote I saved.
“It becomes more and more difficult to avoid the idea of black men as subjects of not just racial profiling but of an insidious form of racial obliteration sanctioned by silence.”
― Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.
― Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.
“It’s getting late. If you’re sleepy I can finish this later.” No, it’s fine, Tsukuru said. I’m not sleepy. In fact, he’d gotten his second wind, and wanted to hear the rest of the story.”
― Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
― Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
“All around him, for as far as he could see, lay a rough land strewn with rocks, with not a drop of water, nor a blade of grass. Colorless, with no light to speak of. No sun, no moon or stars. No sense of direction, either. At a set time, a mysterious twilight and a bottomless darkness merely exchanged places. A remote border on the edges of consciousness. At the same time, it was a place of strange abundance. At twilight birds with razor-sharp beaks came to relentlessly scoop out his flesh. But as darkness covered the land, the birds would fly off somewhere, and that land would silently fill in the gaps in his flesh with something else, some other indeterminate material.”
― Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
― Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
“THERE ARE FEW THINGS as beautiful as a glass bottle filled with deep amber whiskey. Liquor shines when the light hits it, reminiscent of precious things like jewels and gold. But whiskey is better than some lifeless bracelet or coronet. Whiskey is a living thing capable of any emotion that you are. It’s love and deep laughter and brotherhood of the type that bonds nations together. Whiskey is your friend when nobody else comes around. And whiskey is solace that holds you tighter than most lovers can. I thought all that while looking at my sealed bottle. And I knew for a fact that it was all true. True the way a lover’s pillow talk is true. True the way a mother’s dreams for her napping infant are true. But the whiskey mind couldn’t think its way out of the problems I had. So I took Mr. Seagram’s, put him in his box, and placed him up on the shelf where he belonged.”
― Black Betty
― Black Betty
“Failing and Flying"
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.”
― Refusing Heaven
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.”
― Refusing Heaven
Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-Thon
— 3810 members
— last activity 17 hours, 10 min ago
The Reverse Readathon has been cancelled. We will see you October 23rd.
Bryan’s 2020 Year in Books
Take a look at Bryan’s Year in Books. The good, the bad, the long, the short—it’s all here.
6,093 books
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2,845 friends
1,692 books
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78 friends
2,245 books
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1,249 friends
1,933 books
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310 friends
737 books
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291 friends
3,060 books
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24 friends
901 books
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95 friends
5,727 books
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377 friends
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