

“That is why I came back. I was wrong in life, limited, shrank everything down to my size, and yet, in the end, there was something light-craving within me, which sent me back, and saved me.”
― In Persuasion Nation
― In Persuasion Nation

“I have a sense that God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy. I believe he takes more pleasure in his perfect creatures, and cheers them on like a brainless dad as they run roughshod over the rest of us. He gives us a need for love, and no way to get any. He gives us a desire to be liked, and personal attributes that make us utterly unlikable. Having placed his flawed and needy children in a world of exacting specifications, he deducts the difference between what we have and what we need from our hearts and our self-esteem and our mental health.”
― CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
― CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
― Middlemarch
― Middlemarch

“This was a new recognition that perfection is admirable but a trifle inhuman, and that a stumbling kind of semi-success can be much more warming. Most of all, perhaps, these exultant yells for the Mets were also yells for ourselves, and came from a wry, half-understood recognition that there is more Met than Yankee in every one of us. I knew for whom that foghorn blew; it blew for me.”
― The Summer Game
― The Summer Game

Book club devoted to the great consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his dear friend and colleague Dr. John Watson. We choose, read and discuss a p ...more
Oliver’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Oliver’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends�
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Oliver
Lists liked by Oliver