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Chad

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Chad is Currently Reading

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The Insufferable Gaucho

by Roberto Bolaño

bookshelves: currently-reading

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Jan 19, 2026 05:24PM

“But how,” said Charles, who was close to tears, “how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder?’
Henry lit a cigarette. “I prefer to think of it,” he had said, “as redistribution of matter.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

1372 likes

“They shoot the white girl first, but the rest they can take their time. No need to hurry out here. They are 17 miles from a town which has 90 miles between it and any other. Hiding places will be plentiful in the convent, but there is time, and the day has just begun. They are nine. Over twice the number of the women, they are obliged to stampede or kill, and they have the paraphernalia for either requirement--rope, a palm leaf cross, handcuffs, mace, and sunglasses, along with clean, handsome guns.”
― Toni Morrison, Paradise

tags: profound

24 likes

“When they fall in love with a city it is for forever. As though there never was a time when they didn't love it. The minute they arrive at the train station or get off the ferry and glimpse the wide streets and the wasteful lamps lighting them, they know they are born for it. There, in a city, they are not so much new as themselves, their stronger, riskier selves. And in the beginning when they first arrive, and twenty years later when they and the city have grown up, they love that part of themselvers so much they forget what loving other people was like - if they ever knew, that is.”
― Toni Morrison, Jazz

29 likes

“What Ryan had learned from this is that your failures keep returning to you, while your successes are something you always have to convince yourself of.”
― Rachel Cusk, Outline

106 likes

“Giovanni had awakened an itch, had released a gnaw in me. I realized it one afternoon, when I was taking him to work via the Boulevard Montparnasse. We had bought a kilo of cherries and we were eating them as we walked along. We were both insufferably childish and high-spirited that afternoon and the spectacle we presented, two grown men jostling each other on the wide sidewalk and aiming the cherry pits, as though they were spitballs, into each other's faces, must have been outrageous. And I realized that such childishness was fantastic at my age and the happiness out of which it sprang yet more so; for that moment I really loved Giovanni, who had never seemed more beautiful than he was that afternoon.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

tags: affection, bisexuality, giovanni-s-room, homosexuality, love, lovers, playfulness

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