Sublime

When faced with a tension between competing values, they do what any smart privileged person bursting with cultural capital would do. They find a way to have both. They reconcile opposites.

had picked up David Brooks’s book The Road to Character.

“If we don’t trust one another, then we aren’t going to engage in open, constructive, ideological conflict. And we’ll just continue to preserve a sense of artificial harmony.”

He traveled constantly, checking off sites on his bucket list—castles in Germany, temples in Cambodia, icebergs in the Arctic. He took lots and lots of pictures to show people what he had seen. Similarly, he had hundreds of people in his life whom he counted as friends but barely knew, but with whom he had pictures. He collected people.

If Thom had a love language, it would be ratfucking—settling scores and taking out hits on behalf of the people he cared about.

Good Judgment Project.

way. In this quiet crucible, he’d forged a personality that was ambitious but patient, innovative without being brash, brave without being dangerous. He was a real leader.

characters in these novels rely on other characters to show them what is worth wanting. They don’t spontaneously desire anything. Instead, their desires are formed by interacting with other characters who alter their goals and their behavior—most of all, their desires.