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Book #5: Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag

Let's see, Woolf writes, "whether when we look at the same photographs we feel the same things."

"Look, the photographs say, this is what it's like. This is what war does. And that, that is what it does, too. War tears, rends. War rips open, eviscerates. War scorches. War dismembers. War ruins."

"Our failure is one of imagination, of empathy: we have failed to hold this reality in mind."

"The destructiveness of war - short of total destruction, which is not war but suicide - is not in itself an argument against waging war unless one thinks (as few people actually do think) that violence is always unjustifiable."

"This sleight of hand allows photographs to be both objective record and personal testimony, both a faithful copy or transcription of an actual moment of reality and an interpretation of that reality - a feat literature has long aspired to, but could never attain in this literal sense"

"To photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude."

"Central to modern expectations, and modern ethical feeling, is the conviction that war is an aberration, if an unstoppable one. That peace is the norm, if an unattainable one. This, of course, is not the war war has been regarded throughout history. War has been the norm and peace the exception."

"Shock can become familiar. Show can wear off."

"Wherever people feel safe - this was her bitter, self-accusing point - they will be indifferent."

"It is intolerable to have one's own sufferings twinned with anybody else's"

"Let the atrocious images haunt us. Even if they are only tokens, and cannot possibly encompass most of the reality to which they refer, they still perform a vital function. The images say: This is what human beings are capable of doing - may volunteer to do, enthusiastically, self-righteously. Don't forget."

"Perhaps too much value is assigned to memory, not enough to thinking."

"If the goal is having some space in which to live one's own life, then it is desirable that the account of specific injustices dissolve into a more general understanding that human beings everywhere do terrible things to one another."

5/5

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Book #4:Normal People by Sally Rooney

“Most people go through their whole lives, Marianne thought, without ever really feeling that close with anyone.”

“The conversations that follow are gratifying for Connell, often taking unexpected turns and prompting him to express ideas he had never consciously formulated before. At time he has the sensation that he and Marianne are like figure skaters, improvising their discussions so adeptly and in such perfect synchronization that it surprises them both.”

“He has managed to nurture a fine artistic sensitivity without ever developing any real sense of right and wrong. The fact that this is even possible unsettles Marianne, and makes art seem pointless suddenly.”

“Connell’s initial assessment of the reading was not disproven. It was culture as class performance, literature fetishized for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about.”

“How strange to feel herself so completely under the control of another person, but also how ordinary.”

“He brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to here. They’ve done a lot of good for each other. Really, she thinks, really. People can change one another.”

3/5

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Book #3: Educated by Tara Westover

“The past is beautiful because one never realizes an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.” - Virginia Woolf

There’s a sense of sovereignty that comes from life on a mountain, a perception of privacy and isolation, even of dominion. It’s a tranquillity born of sheer immensity; it calms with its very magnitude, which renders the merely human of no consequence.

The skill I was learning was a crucial one, the patience to read things I could not yet understand.

I would remain a child, in perpetuity, always.

But when I’d seen those courses in the catalog, and read their titles aloud, I had felt something infinite, and I wanted a taste of that infinity.

I read them to learn what to think, not how to think for myself.

There was a sting in this arithmetic: in knowing that in the divine calculus of heaven, one man could balance the equation for countless women.

4/5

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Comedy #2: Ken Jeong - You complete me, Ho

2/5

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Comedy #1: Amy Schumer - Growing

4/5

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TV Show: The Walking Dead (Season 9)

3/5

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Movie #26: Breathe (2017)

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Movie #25: Colette (2018)

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Book #2: Guerra y Paz de Lev Tolstoi

“Si todo el mundo hiciera la guerra por convicción, no habría ninguna.”

“...añadió con aquella fraternal y jubilosa dulzura que emplean los jóvenes para con todo el mundo, cuando se sienten felices.”

“Porque los acontecimientos no se producen según nuestra voluntad y no se ordenan de antemano como en un desfile.”

“Pertenecía Pedro a esa categoría poco numerosa de hombres que no se sienten fuertes más que cuando saben que su conciencia nada tiene que reprocharles.”

“Qué significan nuestras querellas y nuestras ofensas cuando nuestros corazones rebosan de amor, de entusiasmo y de exaltación? Amo a todo el mundo y a todos los perdono.”

“Con los ojos fijos en Napoleón pensaba en la insignificancia de la grandeza, en la insignificancia de la vida cuyo objeto nadie comprendía, en la insignificancia mayor aún de la muerte cuyo sentido permanecía oculto e impenetrable a los humanos...”

“La fuente de la felicidad no está fuera de nosotros, sino en nosotros mismos.”

“El 12 de junio las tropas de Europa occidental atravesaron las fronteras y la guerra empezó, es decir, se produjo un hecho contrario a la razón y a la naturaleza humana.”

“En la vida de cada hombre hay dos aspectos: la vida personal que es tanto más libre cuanto más abstractos son sus intereses, y la vida general, social, en la que el hombre obedece inevitablemente las leyes que le han sido prescritas. El hombre vive conscientemente por sí mismo, pero sirve de instrumento inconsciente a los fines históricos de la humanidad. El acto realizado es irreparable y al concordar al mismo tiempo con millones de actos realizados por otros hombres, adquiere importancia histórica. Cuanto más elevado se encuentra el hombre en la escala social, más ligado se encuentra con los que están en un plano superior, más poder tiene sobre los otros y más evidentes son la predestinación y la fatalidad de cada uno de sus actos.”

“En los acontecimientos históricos, los grandes hombres son etiquetas, ellos son los que menos relación tienen con el hecho mismo.”

“Indudablemente tiene razón, como la tienen todos los historiadores que buscan la explicación de los acontecimientos históricos en la voluntad de un solo hombre.”

“El general en jefe se encuentra siempre en medio de una serie agitada de acontecimientos, en una forma que nunca puede darse cuenta de toda la importancia del acontecimiento que se está desarrollando. En algunas ocasiones el acontecimiento se agrava insensiblemente y, en cada momento de esta gradual agravación, el general en jefe se encuentra en medio del juego más complicado de intrigas, de preocupaciones, de dependencia del poder, de proyectos, de consejos, de amenazas, de engaños, y tiene necesidad de estar siempre atento a estas inútiles actividades y de responder a todas las preguntas que se le hacen y que siempre son contradictorias.”

“Es el azar quien escoge y nosotros juzgamos y nos quejamos.”

“Natacha y la princesa María lloraban no solamente a causa de su propio dolor, sino por la terrible emoción que las embargaba al verse en presencia del misterio tan solemne y tan sencillo de la muerte.”

““He aquí la causa”. Es lo que cualquiera que no profundiza en las cosas suele exclamar a la primera coincidencia que le impresiona. Es también innata en el corazón del hombre la necesidad de averiguar la correlación de las causas que acontecen, aunque no las comprenda.”

“Mas, en aquellos momentos, la ausencia de sufrimientos, la satisfacción de las necesidades de la vida y, por consiguiente, la libertad en la elección de las ocupaciones o del género de existencia constituían para Pedro algo así como el ideal de la felicidad en este mundo.”

“Cuando una idea me preocupa, todo lo que no sea eso es insignificante.”

4/5

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Movie #24: What Happened to Monday (2017)

3/5

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Movie #23: The Lady in the Van (2015)

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Movie #22: The Kissing Booth (2018)

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Movie #21: Paddington (2014)

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TV Show #3: Tidying Up with Marie Kondo

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Movie #20: Born on the Fourth of July (1989)

“Do you remember things that made sense? Things you could count on? Before we all got so lost?“

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Movie #19: Isn’t it Romantic (2019)

2/5

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Movie #18: About Time (2013)

“And in the end I think I've learned the final lesson from my travels in time; and I've even gone one step further than my father did. The truth is I now don't travel back at all, not even for the day. I just try to live every day as if I've deliberately come back to this one day, to enjoy it, as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life.“

4/5