closethikikomoriblog

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It is hard to meet a stranger. Even the greatest extravert meeting even the meekest stranger knows a certain dread, though he may not know he knows it. Will he make a fool of me wreck my image of myself invade me destroy me change me? Will he be different from me? Yes, that he will. There’s the terrible thing: the strangeness of the stranger.

— Ursula K. Le Guin, Nine Lives

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It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that it purloined.

— Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

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The twins were too young to know that these were only history’s henchmen. Sent to square the books and collect the dues from those who broke its laws. Impelled by feelings that were primal yet paradoxically wholly impersonal. Feelings of contempt born of inchoate, unacknowledged fear—civilization’s fear of nature, men’s fear of women, power’s fear of powerlessness. Man’s subliminal urge to destroy what he could neither subdue nor deify. Men’s Needs.

— Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

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It is only now, these years later, that Rahel with adult hindsight recognized the sweetness of that gesture. A grown man entertaining three raccoons, treating them like real ladies. Instinctively colluding in the conspiracy of their fiction, taking care not to decimate it with adult carelessness. Or affection. It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain. To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do.

— Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

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It didn’t matter that the story had begun, because kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again.

— Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

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When she looked at herself in her wedding photographs, Ammu felt the woman that looked back at her was someone else. A foolish jeweled bride. Her silk sunset-colored sari shot with gold. Rings on every finger. White dots of sandalwood paste over her arched eyebrows. Looking at herself like this, Ammu's soft mouth would twist into a small, bitter smile at the memory—not of the wedding itself so much as the fact that she had permitted herself to be so painstakingly decorated before being led to the gallows. It seemed so absurd. So futile. Like polishing firewood.

— Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

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Of course, she had reason to be proud. Her skin was the color of white jade. Or maybe it was the color of a summer peach. Or maybe I am only remembering my mother as another classical tale, all those phrases about ladies with voices as pretty-sounding as lutes, skin as white as jade, their gracefulness flowing like calm rivers. Why did stories always describe women that way, making us believe we had to be that way too?

— Amy Tan, The Kitchen God's Wife

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The trouble is we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.

— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

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I was born with good luck. But over the years, my luck—just like my prettiness—dried out, then carved my lines on my face so I would not forget.

— Amy Tan, The Kitchen God's Wife

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What Greatness Looks Like From Mandela to Midoriya

Launching my Fixation Friday weekly entries today~ Essentially, I am dedicating my Fridays to scream, rave, and wax poetic about my current reads and other fixations. Keeps me sane :D Have fun reading~

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Common Cause: How Our Similarities Teach Us How to Love

When people, despite their differences, focus on what they have in common instead, the act breeds compassion. The perspective shift also grants them superpowers, strong enough to push back against evil. Here's my essay about Ray Bradbury's 1960s novel.

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Surpass Old Goals: How to Read More Than 10 Books This Year

I never went beyond ten books annually before, so it’s a really sweet surprise to realize I’m on my sixth book this month. Here’s how I did it.

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The Art of Decluttering

Starting this week with a poem :) One of this piece's inspirations is a section from Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. A fun and insightful read.

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Excerpt from Attack on Titan by Hajime Isayama

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Excerpt from Shaman King by Hiroyuki Takei

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Excerpt from Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

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Excerpt from Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury