We spend much of our lives alone. Some cope with it better than others. The ones who don’t are primed and ready for victimhood. You have to learn to be with yourself, because if you don’t, there’s a whole world of drugs, booze and rotten people who will be your friend until you’ve been sucked dry. Beware of what loneliness makes you do. . .
--Josh Olson, The Life and Death of Jesse James (via Chris)
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Rachel Seiffert's top 10 books about troubled families
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The demand that stories must be “about” something is from Communist thinking and, further back, from religious thinking, with its desire for self-improvement books as simple-minded as the messages on samplers.
--Nobel Prize-winner Doris Lessing, Questions You Should Never Ask a Writer
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A bang, not a whimper
Two months into L.'s retirement, and I'm finished with the stockpiling of books. No more book purchases! Or at least, no purcha...
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(See also Musee des Beaux Arts ) As far as mental anguish goes, the old painters were no fools. They understood how the mind, the freakiest ...
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When I finished Kevin Brockmeier's A Brief History of the Dead last spring I immediately did a search to see if the Coca-Cola Corp. had...
That Olson quote is very astute. Makes me glad to be an introvert.
ReplyDeleteYup. As I tell my son, we all gotta develop those inner resources.
ReplyDeleteI really like the Josh Olson quote. I think it's really true. I think if the only people who were together because they still really wanted to be, we'd have a whole lot more single people. Desperation and loneliness can make a person do or put up with really awful things.
ReplyDeleteIt's a wonderful quote and a really really interesting article. Y'all go read it, as well. Time well spent, I promise.
ReplyDeleteCompletely unrelated to this post, I just have to say, Susan, your comments elsewhere cracked me up this morning!
ReplyDelete:o)
Crissy
I'm glad, Chrissy. I'm well aware that I'm being nothing but a little shit by this point, but I. just. don't. care. :)
ReplyDeleteThat Olsen quote is very apt. I thought when I married I wouldn't be alone anymore; but my husband's work means he travels a lot. I have had to put in place coping mechanisms or I get very blue. And, I always thought I was a fairly solitary person - but I don't think we are made to be that way. We all need some sort of companion - now I have two dogs to keep me company when he is away!
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