

“...uncontrolled passions are like poison. Dormant, they are vices, they feed the soul, and the soul, deceived, or believing it is being nourished, is in fact being poisoned by its own unknown and unruly passion. Is it true, as other heretics, the Cathars, believed, that the best way to rid oneself of passion is to bring it into the open and indulge it, with no restraint of any kind?”
― Inez
― Inez

“The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance, and goodwill can cause as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened. People are more often good than bad, though in fact that is not the question. But they are more or less ignorant and this is what one calls vice or virtue, the most appalling vice being the ignorance that thinks it knows everything and which consequently authorizes itself to kill. The murderer's soul is blind, and there is no true goodness or fine love without the greatest possible degree of clear-sightedness.”
― The Plague
― The Plague

“Did you know we know we are all the object of another's imagination?”
― The Old Gringo
― The Old Gringo

“For marriage has nothing in common with love. marriage makes for security; love makes only for suffering. On the other hand, love could be so distilled, spun so fine as to implicate third and fourth persons, as to take up three or four exciting acts in a play.”
― The Flounder
― The Flounder

“The terrifying experience and obsession of death, when preserved in consciousness, becomes ruinous. If you talk about death, you save part of yourself. But at the same time, something of your real self dies, because objectified meanings lose the actuality they have in consciousness.”
― On the Heights of Despair
― On the Heights of Despair
Golnaz’s 2024 Year in Books
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