books quotes
“We don’t get the families we deserve,” Willem had said once when they had been very stoned. He was, of course, speaking of Jude. “I agree,” JB had replied. And he did. None of them—not Willem, not Jude, not even Malcolm—had the families they deserved. But secretly, he made an exception for himself: He did have the family he deserved. They were
... See moreTheir faith in him, in his ultimate triumph, remained unwavering, almost disconcertingly so. They were convinced—even as his own conviction was tested so many times that it was becoming difficult to self-generate it—that he would someday be an important artist, that his work would hang in major museums, that the people who hadn’t yet given him his
... See moreShe had checked their credit and their bank accounts and had at last realized that there was something amiss about two men in their twenties who were not a couple and yet were trying to rent a one-bedroom apartment on a dull (but still expensive) stretch of Twenty-fifth Street.
And so who would be his partner, who would make his unit? No one, it often seemed. They had abandoned him. And then, with each year, they abandoned him further. He had always known he would be the first among the four of them to be a success. This wasn’t arrogance: he just knew it. He worked harder than Malcolm, he was more ambitious than Willem.
... See moreHanya Yanagihara • A Little Life: The Million-Copy Bestseller (Picador Collection)
He knew it was romantic, but he admired them: he admired anyone who could live for year after year on only their fast-burning hopes, even as they grew older and more obscure with every day. And, just as romantically, he thought of his time with the organization as his salute to his friends, all of whom were living the sorts of lives he marveled at:
... See moreHanya Yanagihara • A Little Life: The Million-Copy Bestseller (Picador Collection)
She had checked their credit and their bank accounts and had at last realized that there was something amiss about two men in their twenties who were not a couple and yet were trying to rent a one-bedroom apartment on a dull (but still expensive) stretch of Twenty-fifth Street.
“To be or not to be. That is the question. A question, yes, but not a choice.”
“But why can’t the language for creativity be the language of regeneration?”
The AI workspace that works for you. | Notion
“Being sorry pays, being sorry even, or especially, when one has no fault, is worth every self-deprecating syllable the mouth allows. Because the mouth must eat.”