A Quote by Claire Messud
To be weighed down by things - books, furniture - seems somehow terrible to me.
Related Quotes
Of course, it’s true that sometimes the pink at sunrise somehow seems brighter than the pink at sunset, and that when you’re feeling down the the landscape seems darker too - you see things through the filter of your own sensibility. But the things themselves, out there, they don’t change. They existed, and that’s all there is to it.
When I think of all the books I have read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have given to parents and grandparents, and of the hopes that I have had, all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.
To me, all these things tell a story, and I find clothespin parts as interesting as 'collectors' furniture.' Good pieces of Shaker furniture are interesting, but only so much. It is the other things and the personal effects that let me feel the Shakers.
Give me a house furnished with books rather than furniture! Both, if you can, but books at any rate!
If you do something really cognitively demanding, like buying furniture, it turns out buying furniture is one of the most difficult things we do. Go into a furniture store and look at a sofa.
The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.
It seems as if, for every dragon head that is lopped off, two more terrible appear. Seems so. But in truth, Life is gaining all the while. Brute force, such power as there seems to be in things, cannot stand against ideas which are eternal.
To me, it seems pretty obvious that socialism is terrible. After all, do you know what's not terrible? Freedom.
It seems to me that the experiences that stay with you, the things you'll always remember, aren't the ones you can force, or go looking for. I've always thought of those things as the ones that somehow find you.
It seems to me that one of the most interesting things about God as a concept, if you decide to believe in God, is that God's ways are unknowable. And God obviously, look at the world around you, does or is responsible for some terrible, terrible, awful things. A young girl kidnapped and kept in the darkness and sexually abused. The deaths of six million Jews. A mudslide that buries a village. All of these things. If God is doing the good stuff, he's got to be doing that stuff too.
At a Boston signing, someone from the audience asked why I was so obsessed with furniture in my books. The question rattled around in my head. I had no idea that I was obsessed with furniture.
It seems to me that there's a terrible misunderstanding between us. It seems to me that I love you a great deal, my friends.
Some of my unhappiest moments have been in organizations. Somehow it seems to be quite respectable to do things in organizations that you would never do in private life. I have had people insult me to my face in front of colleagues. I have had my feelings rammed down my throat on the pretext that it would do me good. I have been required to do things which I didn't agree with because the organization wished it... In my worst moments I have thought organizations were places designed to be run by sadists and staffed by masochists.
It was also a room full of books and made of books. There was no actual furniture; this is to say, the desk and chairs were shaped out of books. It looked as though many of them were frequently referred to, because they lay open with other books used as bookmarks.
I hate to say, I kind of hope so, in the sense that, yes, Donald Trump will be terrible, but I want the Republicans just to remain divided. It's not good for the country, but I think in the end I want people to realize what a terrible guy this is, and I'm afraid that that's not going to happen if somehow he resigns or somehow gets impeached and we have Pence instead.
You have to be as light as you can be and not get weighed down and stuck in your emotion, stuck in your body, stuck in your head. You just want to always be trying to elevate somehow.
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