

“There is something about the aroma of fresh books that's totally intoxicating. A new book has a certain clean, crisp smell full of promise that is difficult to define. Sort of like the scent and feeling of just-washed bed linens at the moment you slide your legs between them.”
― Blind Submission
― Blind Submission

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
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―

“Fear is a lethal killer of dreams, the greatest cancer that has beset passion, and a ruthless thief of lives stolen and buried in the decay of lives squandered. Yet the greatest tragedy of all is that the fear that destroys us is rarely the monster it pretends to be, nor does it possess anything close to the power that we grant it. Therefore, it is only a killer, a cancer and a thief because we empower it to be so.”
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“If you spend all your time thinking about how someone is going to one-up you, you can't put your best foot forward.”
― Coming Up for Air
― Coming Up for Air
“I wonder if you realize: When you browbeat people who disagree with you into silence - because they don't want to be called hater, bigot, Hitler, whatever - their silence will create for you the illusion that you're winning. But it's just an illusion - an illusion you find so intoxicating that you're completely unprepared when the moment of truth comes . . . and you lose.”
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Jovan’s 2024 Year in Books
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