I felt like a mouse running through one of those cardboard mazes. I didn't have to think about anything I did. My body just...went. The difference was that, unlike the mouse, there was no hunk of cheese waiting for me at the end. No reward of any kin...
So stark ist der Zauber der Musik und, immer mächtiger werdend, musste er jede Fessel einer andern Kunst zerreißen." ( )
In the end, having no compass for his desires, he yielded to his nature.
...people with nothing to declare carry the most.
Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they're nothing.
[The past] has a way of hanging around, demanding we understand it and weave it into ourselves so that we can go on.
The only debatable issue, it seems to me, is whether it is more ridiculous to turn to experts in social theory for general well-confirmed propositions, or to the specialists in the great religions and philosophical systems for insights into fundament...
It was machines that scanned the heavens, machines that probed the space between atoms, machines that asked the questions and designed to experiments to answer them. All that was left for mere meat, apparently, was navel-gazing.
All readers have reading in common.
In order to pronounce a book bad it is not enough to discover that it elicits no good response from ourselves, for that might be our fault.
...we can pretend that the book in question is not Mr. West’s but mine, made mine by the madness of my reading.
There was one sure way to avoid being assigned an impromptu chore in our house - be it taking out the trash or cleaning your room - and that was to have your face buried in a book. Like churches during the Middle Ages, books conferred instant sanctua...
I know, I know: it can be frustrating as hell. But people have an unfortunate habit of assuming they understand the reality just because they understood the analogy. You dumb down brain surgery enough for a preschooler to think he understands it, the...
You're doing it again. Using reason to argue faith. Can't be done. Like playing croquet with a crochet hook. Sounds something like the right tool for the job, but isn't.
There is no position outside of reason where you can stand and lecture about reason and pass judgment on reason.
We don’t really communicate […]. We talk all right, talk in that strange language we’ve evolved for the purposes of avoiding communication. That non-language we’ve created. Perhaps it’s a sign that civilisation is regressing. Something is a...
He's like a drug for you, Bella.
Fuck You!' [Oskar said] 'Exuse me!' [His mom said] 'Sorry. I mean, screw you.' 'You need a time-out!' 'I need a mausoleum!
I wanted to cry but I didn't, I probably should have cried, I should have drowned us there in the room ending our suffering.
and (then , a penniless Polish immigrant living in a garret in Paris) had met at the Sorbonne and been drawn to each other because of a common interest in magnetism.
The trial designed to bring the most rigorous statistical analysis to the cause of lung cancer barely required elementary mathematics to prove its point.
