underscored

@underscored

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I gasped and sobbed and clutched the book when it was over. I was so thankful for the reminder that reading can still be like this, that the realm of the unread always holds, somewhere, the exact thing I'm looking for, whatever it is.

Jia Tolentino
1w ago

Instead of rich and poor, high and low, they are to be classed, — First, by their sorrows: for instance, whenever there are any, whether in fair mansion or hovel, who are mourning the loss of relations and friends, and who wear black, whether the cloth be coarse or superfine, they are to make one class. Secondly, all who have the same maladies, whether they lie under damask canopies or on straw pallets or in the wards of hospitals, they are to form one class. Thirdly, all who are guilty of the same sins, whether the world knows them or not; whether they languish in prison, looking forward to the gallows, or walk honored among men, they also form a class.

1mo ago

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life. Yet another person's words can reach through the walls — which is why literature matters.

2mo ago

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility.

3mo ago

The mind of man is capable of anything because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future.

4mo ago

For a start, the Odyssey was the first time a hero in Western culture was celebrated for smarts and cunning—and not just fighting and violence. It was as if Homer had grown up after creating the Iliad (in which 239 characters, identified by name, meet their death), and decided to tell a more civilized tale.

5mo ago
3quarksdaily.com
Thursday Poem

But hang on here while we make the turn into the final six where all will be resolved, where longing and heartache will find an end, where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen, take off those crazy medieval tights, blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.

6mo ago

These older books have a sense of integrity. This project was just an opportunity for me to go back to some of my favorite books and look at the ways that's true.

6mo ago

One of my favorite radio programs of all time, where an author (and often a legendary one) is interviewed about their novel by an audience that's recently read it.

6mo ago

Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.

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