books

Everything Sad is Untrue, by Daniel Nayeri

“We can know and be known to each other, and then we’re not enemies anymore” (pg 1).

“Kill everyone at a party, and you are the life of the party, but that doesn’t make you good company” (pg 24).

“Every story is the sound of a storyteller begging to stay alive” (pg. 59).

“Ellie had a lot of sadness in her life. Sadness of the kind that makes perfectly normal people into poets” (pg 121).

“Does writing poetry make you brave? It is a good question to ask. I think making anything is a brave thing to do. Not like fighting brave, obviously. But a kind that looks at a horrible situation and doesn’t crumble.
Making anything assumes there’s a world worth making it for. That you’ll have someplace, like a clown’s pants, to hide it when people come to take it away.
I guess I’m saying making something is a hopeful thing to do” (pg 122).

“Karen was kind in a way that people can be, when kindness doesn’t cost them anything” (pg 306).


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In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom, by Yeonmi Park

“We tell stories in order to live” (pg 5).

“The green forest flutters in our land and mountains, and I didn’t plant even one tree . . .” (pg 106).

“I was starting to realize that you can’t really grow and learn unless you have a language to grow within . . . reading was teaching me what it meant to be alive, to be human” (pg 230).

“You can’t tell how smart a child is until he grows up” (pg 232).

“She had always told me that to be happy, you must give to others, no matter how poor you are . . . my life to this point had been very selfish” ( pg 247).


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The Bomber Mafia, by Malcolm Gladwell

“How is it that, sometimes, for any number of unexpected and random reasons, technology slips away from its intended path? “ (pg 9)

“The more you invest in a set of beliefs - the greater the sacrifice you make in the service of that conviction - the more resistant you will be to evidence that suggests that you are mistaken” (pg 113).

“You should never do evil so that good may come” (pg 179).

Grade: B-

A history buff might enjoy this, but for me, it was . . . meh.

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