Florencia's Reviews > Nothing to Be Frightened of
Nothing to Be Frightened of
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Florencia's review
bookshelves: non-fiction, diaries-memoirs-letters, philosophyland, currently-reading
Jul 27, 2021
bookshelves: non-fiction, diaries-memoirs-letters, philosophyland, currently-reading
When we fall in love, we hope—both egotistically and altruistically—that we shall be finally, truly seen: judged and approved. Of course, love does not always bring approval: being seen may just as well lead to a thumbs-down and a season in hell.
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I used to believe, when I was 'just' a reader, that writers, because they wrote books where truth was found, because they described the world, because they saw into the human heart, because they grasped both the particular and the general and were able to re-create both in free yet structured forms, because they understood, must therefore be more sensitive—also less vain, less selfish—than other people. Then I became a writer, and started meeting other writers, and studied them, and concluded that the only difference between them and other people, the only, single way in which they were better, was that they were better writers. They might indeed be sensitive, perceptive, wise, generalizing and particularizing—but only at their desks and in their books. When they venture out into the world, they regularly behave as if they have left all their comprehension of human behaviour stuck in their typescripts. It's not just writers either. How wise are philosophers in their private lives?
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Reading Progress
June 29, 2021
– Shelved
July 27, 2021
–
Started Reading
July 31, 2021
–
0.4%
"I don’t believe in God but I miss Him. That’s what I say when the question is put."
page
1
August 1, 2021
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8.8%
"If I call myself an atheist at twenty, and an agnostic at fifty and sixty, it isn't because I have acquired more knowledge in the meantime: just more awareness of ignorance. How can we be sure that we know enough to know?"
page
22
August 23, 2021
–
28.8%
"...if this sounds like nostalgia, it’s the nostalgia for something I’ve never known—which is, admittedly, the more toxic kind."
page
72
April 24, 2022
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38.4%
"'Once you have kissed a corpse on the forehead there always remains something on your lips, a distant bitterness, an aftertaste of the void that nothing will efface.'"
page
96
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Junta
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Aug 02, 2021 04:19AM
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They are! This book sounded more interesting to me than The sense of an ending, but I'll definitely read that one at some point.
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Ilse wrote: "Tantalizing quotes, thank you so much for sharing, Florencia. As much as I loved the few novels and short stories I loved by Barnes, it were his acute observations in his essays and his funny colum..."
Glad to hear you enjoyed these quotes. :) A beautiful book, so far.