#excerptsfrombooks

[magnificentlyinsane]

Your voices matter, your dreams matter, your lives matter. Be roses that grow in the concrete.

~ Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give.

[magnificentlyinsane]

"I think love is a hard word to define," I say to her. "You can love a lot of things about a person but still not love the whole person."

~Colleen Hoover, Confess.

[16dimensions]

Memorable quotes from Pachinko:

“There was consolation: The people you loved, they were always there with you, she had learned. Sometimes, she could be in front of a train kiosk or the window of a bookstore, and she could feel Noa’s small hand when he was a boy, and she would close her eyes and think of his sweet, grassy smell and remember that he had always tried his best. At those moments, it was good to be alone to hold on to him.”

“Noa had noticed her beautiful handwriting on the files even before he noticed her. It was possible that he was in love with the way she wrote the number two- her parallel lines expressing a kind of free movement inside the invisible box that contained the ideograph’s strokes...he could detect that there was a kind of dancing spirit in the hand that wrote such elegant letters.”

“Neither had realised the loneliness each had lived with for such a long time until the loneliness was interrupted by genuine affection.”

“She wished she could take back the times she had scolded her children just because she was tired. There were so many errors. If life allowed revisions, she would let them stay in their bath a little longer, read them one more story before bed, and fix them another plate of shrimp.”

“It was not Hansu that she missed, or even Isak. What she was seeing in her dreams was her youth, her beginning, and her wishes—so this was how she became a woman. Without Hansu and Isak and Noa, there wouldn't have been this pilgrimage to this land. Beyond the dailiness, there had been moments of shimmering beauty and some glory, too, even in this ajumma's life. Even if no one knew, it was true.”

“Every morning, Mozasu and his men tinkered with the machines to fix the outcomes – there could only be a few winners and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones. How could you get angry at the ones who wanted to be in the game? Etsuko had failed in this important way – she had not taught her children to hope, to believe in the perhaps absurd possibility that they might win. Pachinko was a foolish game, but life was not.”

[16dimensions]

How we view the world shapes the questions we ask of it. The questions we ask of it shapes how we engage with it.  When we view the world through individualist lenses-"in the end, it's up to the individual"- we ask questions inward. How will I do better in the next exam? How do I make sure my child can keep up with her classmates? What self-help book do I read to learn how to maximise my potential? How do I make sure I can "leverage" on  qualities no one else has? My students' astute observations about the uncertainty and costs of their own ostensibly "successful" paths suggest that these questions can make us feel lonely and powerless. We are in the lanes we are in. I'm sorry there are people in the slow lanes that lead to poorer destinations but there is nothing I can do about that. In the end, we are just individuals, and act as individuals. When we play by the rules, when we accept the logic embedded in a system - with its accompanying rules, regulations, procedures - we normalise and strengthen that system's logic. Our participation is a necessary condition of any system's perpetuation. When we engage with the world as if we are mere individuals, we behave as if we have no right to ask questions about the system that compels our cooperation. When we engage with the world as if we are mere individuals, we perpetuate our individualism, isolation and powerlessness. When we live in society, it is crucial to understand and appreciate that we are always connected to others. The choices we make - the roads we take - may feel like individual ones but they are not. Roads and lanes exist before we as individual persons exist; they will continue to exist after we as individuals cease to exist. How we behave as we travel on them affects other road users, present and future. When we live in society, it is crucial to be motivated and emboldened to act as members of a collective, as part of a team on a road that we share.

Tan You Yenn in “The Birthday Book 2018″

[excerptsfrombooks-blog]

Quando fecho os olhos,vejo seu rosto; quando caminho, é quase como se conseguisse sentir a sua mão na minha. Essas coisas ainda são reais para mim, mas aonde uma vez elas trouxeram conforto, hoje provocam dor. 

- Querido John, página 157.