An Eclectic Reader's Journal

Betsy is an avid reader. This journal records snippets plucked from stuff she reads.

[theoptia]

Simone de Beauvoir, from Diary of a Philosophy Student: Volume 1, 1926-27

Text ID: I observe how much I have matured since last year despite my belief that I was losing myself, how something strong was born from the painful experiences survived and from the numerous minutes that I believed were wasted.

[vaninnavaninni]

“You must read, you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark.”

— Giovanni Boccaccio (b. 16 June 1313)

[betsy-the-eclectic-reader]

The problem with anywhere else is that you still end up somewhere. Even when you're from away, that's where you are now.

- Sarah Teresa Cook, Bones in the Ground (from Someone like Me: An Anthology of Non-fiction by Autistic Writers)

[betsy-the-eclectic-reader]

We have to articulate new visions of ourselves, new concepts that allow us to think otherwise, to bypass the ancient symmetries and dichotomies that have governed the ground...

—Françoise Lionnet, Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self-Portraiture (1989)

[philosophybits]

“Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.”

— Bertrand Russell, “The Best Answer to Fanaticism: Liberalism”, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell

[betsy-the-eclectic-reader]

But I do have special affection for the places of transit that go with traveling: stations and airport lounges, trams, shuttle buses, and check-in areas. In-between zones where all ties are suspended and time stretched to a sort of continuous present. Oases of nonbelonging, spaces of detachment. No-(wo)man's lands.

–Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects

[weltenwellen]

Rainer Maria Rilke in a letter to Lou Andreas-Salomé, published in Rilke and Andreas-Salomé: A Love Story in Letters

[funeral]

All this means, to be sure, that life can be regarded as a dream and death as the awakening from it: but it must be remembered that the personality, the individual, belongs to the dreaming and not to the awakened consciousness, which is why death appears to the individual as annihilation. In any event, death is not, from this point of view, to be considered a transition to a state completely new and foreign to us, but rather a return to one originally our own from which life has been only a brief absence. Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

[betsy-the-eclectic-reader]

These words that spill from them, black memories, they can't stop. Their stories are eating them alive, turning them inside out. They cannot stop talking. I cut all my words out. My heart was too full of them.

– Kathleen Glasgow, Girl in Pieces

[betsy-the-eclectic-reader]

While he took care never to let her see him, Strike doubted that her hollow eyes would retain much of an impression even if he had moved into plain view. They had become shuttered, full of inner darkness, no longer taking in the outside world.

–Robert Galbraith, Career of Evil

[forgedbybooks]

“Collect books, even if you don't plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library.” ― John Waters

[betsy-the-eclectic-reader]

It was very difficult to look her in the face without feeling guilty, even at moments when one was not guilty of anything in particular.

– George Orwell, Such, Such were the Joys

[betsy-the-eclectic-reader]

[daweyt]

Thomas Mann, from “Death in Venice”, originally published c. 1912.

[betsy-the-eclectic-reader]

"Play interests me very much," said Hermann: "but I am not in the position to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of winning the superfluous."

–Alexander S. Pushkin, The Queen of Spades

[strangemonochromes]

Monster (モンスター) // Naoki Urasawa

[escuerzoresucitado]