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49,785 voters
“If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home.”
― The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
― The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.”
― The Left Hand of Darkness
― The Left Hand of Darkness
“Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties -- all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name's Dave and I live in a one-by-one box of bone no other party can penetrate or know. Fiction, poetry, music, really deep serious sex, and, in various ways, religion -- these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.”
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“Do you know I've been sitting here thinking to myself: that if I didn't believe in life, if I lost faith in the woman I love, lost faith in the order of things, were convinced in fact that everything is a disorderly, damnable, and perhaps devil-ridden chaos, if I were struck by every horror of man's disillusionment -- still I should want to live. Having once tasted of the cup, I would not turn away from it till I had drained it! At thirty though, I shall be sure to leave the cup even if I've not emptied it, and turn away -- where I don't know. But till I am thirty I know that my youth will triumph over everything -- every disillusionment, every disgust with life. I've asked myself many times whether there is in the world any despair that could overcome this frantic thirst for life. And I've come to the conclusion that there isn't, that is until I am thirty.”
― The Brothers Karamazov
― The Brothers Karamazov
“Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man.”
― The Idiot
― The Idiot
David Foster Wallace
— 299 members
— last activity Oct 15, 2016 07:21PM
A group for the amazing work of David Foster Wallace, now deceased. RIP 1962-2008 Feel free to add his books to the bookshelf for the group.
Kindle - loanable books available
— 33 members
— last activity Jun 10, 2016 05:07PM
Kindle owners post books you are willing to loan and post your "wish" list to find kindle titles to borrow.... ...more
Amazon Kindle
— 11614 members
— last activity 1 hour, 25 min ago
For readers using the Amazon Kindle ebook device.
Peace Corps
— 134 members
— last activity Jan 22, 2019 12:28PM
Whether or not voracious readers in the states, many PCVs find themselves with plenty of time on their hands and end up making their way through an im ...more
Community Learning Center Schools (unofficial)
— 1 member
— last activity Aug 14, 2017 08:34PM
CLCS staff, students, & environs ...more
Jesse’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Jesse’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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