Flesh by David Szalay, r. Feb. 2026

p. 128 "So you need to fit in. You need to fit in with everything else in their lives. That's what they want. They're people with serious money and they want someone who fits in with everything else in their lives."

p. 83 He realizes that the thing that are so important to him – the things that happened, and that he saw there, the things that left him feeling that nothing would ever be the same again – they just aren't important here. [as he looks out the window of the train, dusk becoming night and thus his own reflection, leaving the war in the Middle East and heading back home]

p. ??? Without that hour in the afternoon to look forward to, there is nothing to give the days any sense of purpose or meaning.

p. 162 There are those London summer days when summer seems muffled somehow, when a cool, humid grayness hangs in the park as he runs. Statues hold their positions.

p. 172 He lies there for another minute or two against the pillows, looking at the ceiling, which is discreetly studded with smoke detectors and other things, and wondering what will happen now.

p. 214 The difference is maybe that when he’s drunk he doesn’t care that he’s disconnected from things, it doesn’t seem to be a problem, whereas when he’s stoned it somehow does.

p. 256 On Christmas Eve he meets some Oxford friends for lunch in London. Afterward they go to a pub in Knightsbridge with an open fire. It’s one of those winter afternoon drinking sessions that merge into evening in a way that’s almost imperceptible as it’s happening. It’s just suddenly nine o’clock.

p. 278 There’s the distinctive quiet that follows the end of one of these [video calls], the restoration of a solitude that was anyway only partly dispelled by the presence of someone else on the laptop screen.

p. 289 The idea that his son is afraid of something, that he’s suffering in some way, and that there’s not much he can do about it is very hard for him to deal with. It’s just very painful to think about.

My Struggle #4 by Karl Ove Knausgaard, r. Dec. 2024

Page 19 It was a good feeling going back into my flat. It was the first place I’d ever been able to call mine, and I enjoyed even the most trivial activities, like hanging up my jacket or putting the milk in the fridge. 

Page 22 What Hilde and I did, occasionally with Eirik, occasionally on our own, was talk. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of her cellar flat, with a bottle of wine between us, the night pressing against the windows, we talked about books we had read, about political issues that interested us, about what awaited us in life, what we wanted to do and what we could do. 

Page 60 Everything that had happened in the past five years rose like steam from a cup when I played a record, not in the form of thoughts or reasoning, but as moods, openings, space. Some general, others specific. If my memories were stacked in a heap on the back of my life’s trailer, music was the rope that held them together and kept it, my life, in position. 

Page 105 Half an hour later we were walking up the hill from the flat. I was drunk in that pure joyful way you can be from white wine, when your thoughts collide with one another like bubbles and what emerges when they burst is pleasure. 

Page 157 Over the white timber fence you could see sections of the river, greenish in the bright sunlight, and the roofs of the houses on the other side. There were trees everywhere, these beautiful green creations that you never really paid much attention to, just walked past; you registered them but they made no great impression on you in the way that dogs or cats did, but they were actually, if you lent the matter some thought, present in a far more breathtaking and sweeping way. 

Page 164 Oh, this is the song about being sixteen years old and sitting on a bus and thinking about her, the one, not knowing that feelings will slowly, slowly, weaken and fade, that life, that which is now so vast and so all-embracing, will inexorably dwindle and shrink until it is a manageable entity that doesn’t hurt so much, but nor is it as good. 

Page 195 Outside it was dark, autumn was wrapping its hand around the world, and I loved it. The darkness, the rain, the sudden cracks in the past that opened when the smell of damp grass and soil rose up at me from a ditch somewhere or when car headlights illuminated a house, all somehow caught and enhanced by the music in the Walkman I always carried with me. 

Page 208 I told her everything else and she listened, occasionally with a genuinely surprised expression on her face, as though she hadn’t thought about what I was saying. Although she had, of course, it was just that her empathy was so immense that she forgot herself and her own thoughts. Sometimes it was as if we were like minds. Or equals at least. Then something changed and the distance between us became apparent. 

Page 214 The sky above the yellow deciduous trees and the green conifers was dense and gray. The grayness, and the fact that all visibility stopped there, just a few meters above, increased the intensity of the colors; the yellow, the green, and the black were hurled into space, as it were, yet blocked by the gray sky, and that must have been why the colors shone with such abandon. They had the power to lift off and disappear into eternity but couldn’t, and so the energy was burned up where they were. 

Page 231 The countryside was like a tub filled to the brim with darkness. The next morning the bottom slowly became visible as the light was poured in and seemingly diluted the darkness. 

Page 291 “Why didn’t you just leave?” I said. “Leave Dad?” I nodded with my mouth full. “I’ve wondered about that many times myself,” she said. “I don’t know.” We ate for a while without speaking. It was odd to think we had been in Sørbøvåg only this morning. It seemed like much longer. It was a different world. “Well, I don’t have a good answer to that,” she said at length.

Page 295 We don’t live our lives alone, but that doesn’t mean we see those alongside whom we live our lives. 

Page 300 Yngve and Kristin had sat down on the sofa. They were looking around the way you do when you are somewhere new, discreetly absorbing their surroundings, constantly aware of each other, not necessarily with their glances but in the total way that lovers can be when everything is about the two of them. Kristin was a miracle of joy and naturalness, and that rubbed off on Yngve, he was fully open to it and wore an almost childish glow that he only had when he was with her. 

Page 343 The other letters were from Hilde and Mom. I didn’t open them until I got home, letters were a party, everything had to be perfect when I read them. Steaming coffee in a cup, music on the stereo, a rollie in my hand, and one ready on the table. I started with the one from Mom. 

Page 360 When darkness fell I let it enter the flat, too, apart from on the desk, where a small lamp shone like an island in the night. There was me and my writing, an island of light in the darkness, that was how I imagined it.

Page 366 The days became shorter, and they became shorter quickly, as though they were racing toward the darkness. The first snow arrived in mid-October, went after a few days, but the next time it fell, at the beginning of November, it came with a vengeance, day after day it tumbled down, and soon everything was packed in thick white cushions of snow, apart from the sea, which with its dark, clean surface and terrible depths lay nearby like an alien and menacing presence, like a murderer who has moved into a neighboring house and whose unheeded knife glints on the kitchen table. 

Page 367 An avalanche blocked the road, a ferry service was started, and the fact that you were only able to leave twice a day increased the feeling that this village was the only village, these people the only people. I was still getting lots of letters, and spent a lot of time answering them, but the life they represented was no longer the one that counted, the one that did was this: up in the morning, out into the snow, up the hill to school, and into class. Stay there all day, in a low-roofed, illuminated bunker, weighted down by the darkness, go home, go shopping, have dinner, and then in the evening train in the gym with the youngest fishermen, watch TV at school, swim in the pool, or sit at home reading or writing until it was so late that I could go to bed and sleep off the dead hours before the next day started. 

Page 383 While I washed my hands I stared at my reflection in the mirror. The singular feeling that arose when you looked at your own eyes, which so purely and unambiguously expressed your inner state, of being both inside and outside, filled me to the hilt for a few intense seconds, but was forgotten the moment I left the room, in the same way that a towel on a hook or a bar of soap in the small hollow in the sink also were, all these trivialities that have no existence beyond the moment, but hang or lie undisturbed in dark, empty rooms until the door is opened the next time and another person grasps the soap, dries his hands on the towel, and examines his soul in the mirror. 

Page 419 I had always liked darkness. When I was small I was afraid of it if I was alone, but when I was with others I loved it and the change to the world it brought. Running around in the forest or between houses was different in the darkness, the world was enchanted, and we, we were breathless adventurers with blinking eyes and pounding hearts. 

Page 431 I unpacked my clothes, ate some supper, read in bed for a couple of hours before switching off the light and going to sleep. 

Page 440 Why didn’t they drink? Why didn’t everyone drink? Alcohol makes everything big, it is a wind blowing through your consciousness, it is crashing waves and swaying forests, and the light it transmits gilds everything you see, even the ugliest and most revolting person becomes attractive in some way, it is as if all objections and all judgments are cast aside in a wide sweep of the hand, in an act of supreme generosity, here everything, and I do mean everything, is beautiful. 

Page 469 People were so preoccupied with trivialities, they kept searching until they found something and then they went for the jugular instead of keeping sight of the bigger picture, here we all are, humans on one earth, we’re only here for the short term, in the midst of all this wondrous creation, grass and trees, badgers and cats, fish and sea, beneath a star-strewn sky, and you get worked up over a broken guitar string? A snapped drumstick? Some silly bed linen that hasn’t been returned? Come on, what’s the matter with all of you?

Page 473 “Five more minutes,” I said. “Then you have to go back inside.” I walked toward the entrance, heard them laughing behind me, I felt such warmth for them, not only for them though, for all the pupils and all the people in the village, in fact, for everyone in the world. It was that kind of day. 

Page 477 the thought made me desperate in the same senseless way that I was sad whenever anyone left a party, as though with every person who left I came a step closer to death or some other calamity.

Page 489 I had never quite found the right tone with Tor Einar. We were the same age and had a lot in common, much more than I and Nils Erik had, but it didn’t help, it was irrelevant. I always played a role when I was with Tor Einar, which wasn’t the case with Nils Erik, and I didn’t like myself when I did, when there was a distance between the person I was and what I said, a kind of delay that allowed space for calculations, as if I wanted to say what he preferred to hear rather than what I had to say or talk about.

The Meadow by James Galvin, r. Jul. 2024

 p. 97 Ray was home at last, by God, and he reckoned he couldn't die now since he was already in heaven. Every time he thought of his good fortune, he just had to drink to it.

p. 173 He tries to concentrate on the early days, before the run of hard winters and disease. In those days he used to wake each morning feeling completely indestructible. The good green memories, those warm winter sunshine memories make him smile in the sunlight with his eyes closed...

p. 215 Lyle learned to pay attention, to think things through and not get ahead of himself, not to lapse into inattention ever. After a while he couldn't not pay attention, shaking a stranger's hand, tasting Mrs. So and So's pickles, setting fenceposts. It endowed all his actions with precision. It gave him total recall. It obliterated time.

Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp, r. Jan. 2024

Page 5 I loved the way drink made me feel, and I loved its special power of deflection, its ability to shift my focus away from my own awareness of self and onto something else, something less painful than my own feelings.

Page 41 Over the years I’ve come to think of memories as tiny living things, microorganisms that swim through the brain until they’ve found the right compartment in which to settle down and rest. If the compartment isn’t available, if there’s no proper label for the memory, it takes up residence somewhere else, gets lodged in a corner and gnaws at you periodically, cropping up at odd times, or in dreams.

Page 58 The knowledge that some people can have enough while you never can is the single most compelling piece of evidence for a drinker to suggest that alcoholism is, in fact, a disease, that it has powerful physiological roots, that the alcoholic’s body simply responds differently to liquor than a nonalcoholic’s.

Page 65 Many of us drink in order to take that flight, in order to pour ourselves, literally, into new personalities: uncap the bottle, pop the cork, slide into someone else’s skin. A liquid makeover, from the inside out.

Page 93 I smiled demurely at all the right moments, maintained the right amount of eye contact, cultivated that particular ego-stroking blend of vulnerability, reverence, and detachment.

Page 106 Recovering alcoholics often talk about drinking “the way they wanted to” when they were alone, drinking without the feeling of social restraint they might have had at a party or in a restaurant. There’s something almost childlike about the need, and about the language we use to describe it: wanting our bottles, wanting to crawl into that dark room in our minds and curl up and be alone with our object of security.

Page 115 The rituals, the little routines, that alcoholics use to break the drinking into segments and minimize its visibility are very preoccupying. You buy, you edge home with your large brown bag, you lock the door behind you, and only then can you relax. All that planning takes energy.

Page 240 “Insight,” he said, “is almost always a rearrangement of fact.”

Page 255 I wanted that wine so badly I could taste it, and the only thing that kept me from rushing out to the liquor store to buy a bottle was the understanding that as soon as I drank the first glass, I’d be obsessing about the next one, and the next and the next and the next. I would not drink one glass; I would drink—and obsess about—one bottle, possibly more. That’s the only option at times like that, to think past the first glass, to think it through. You’ve never had “just one drink” in your life.

Page 271 When you question your alcoholism, you say to yourself: If I am an alcoholic, I shouldn’t drink and if I’m not an alcoholic, I don’t need to. That’s a nice piece of logic. You say: People who aren’t alcoholics do not lie in bed at two-thirty in the morning wondering if they’re alcoholics. A good reality check. 

Darker Than Night by Tom Henderson, r. Oct. 2019

p. 7 David wasn't an avid deer hunter, had never shot one, in fact. It wasn't one of the highlights of his year, as it is for many hunters. Most years he went, but it wasn't a religion for him. Truth of it was, sitting in a deer blind was more of a good, quiet way to get over his hangover from the night before than it was a place of stealth from which to kill deer. Brian wasn't much of a hunter, either, though he went every year, too, mostly to drink beer with the guys and play cards. His girlfriend, Janice Payne, would joke about him and David: "They seen a deer, they wouldn't shoot it, you know?" In fact, Brian wasn't a hunter at all. He might not admit it to the guys, but he told Janice he'd seen many a deer walking by over the years but had never even aimed at one, much less pulled a trigger. He just liked drinking with the guys at night and sitting out in the woods, at peace, during the day.

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham, r. May 2018

p. 49 The feeling of apartness from others comes to most with puberty, but it is not always developed to such a degree as to make the difference between the individual and his fellows noticeable to the individual. It is such as he, as little conscious of himself as the bee in a hive, who are the lucky in life, for they have the best chance of happiness: their activities are shared by all, and their pleasures are only pleasures because they are enjoyed in common.

p. 88 The school seemed less of a prison when he knew that before Easter he would be free from it for ever. His heart danced within him. That evening in chapel he looked round at the boys, standing according to their forms, each in his due place, and he chuckled with satisfaction at the thought that soon we would never see them again. It made him regard them almost with a friendly feeling.

p. 121 It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded.

p. 142 He had read many descriptions of love, and he felt in himself none of that uprush of emotion which novelists described; he was not carried off his feet in wave upon wave of passion; nor was Miss Wilkinson the ideal: he had often pictured to himself the great violet eyes and the alabaster skin of some lovely girl, and he had thought of himself burying his face in the rippling masses of her auburn hair. He could not imagine himself burying his face in Miss Wilkinson's hair, it always struck him as a little sticky.

p. 207 "I do not attach any exaggerated importance to my poetical works. Life is there to be lived rather than to be written about."

p. 210 "I have nothing to do with others, I am only concerned with myself. I take advantage of the fact that the majority of mankind are led by certain rewards to do things which directly or indirectly tend to my convenience."

p. 224 It grew so hot that it was almost impossible to sleep at night. The heat seemed to linger under the trees as though it were a material thing. They did not wish to leave the starlit night, and the three of them would sit on the terrace of Ruth Chalice's room, silent, hour after hour, too tired to talk any more, but in voluptuous enjoyment of the stillness. They listened to the murmur of the river.

p. 242 "What happens to our work afterwards is unimportant; we have got all we could out of it while we were doing it."

p. 243 Of late Philip had been captivated by an idea that since one had only one life it was important to make a success of it, but he did not count success by the acquiring of money or the achieving of fame; he did not quite know yet what he meant by it, perhaps variety of experience and the making the most of his abilities.

p. 248 "Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five. Without an adequate income half the possibilities of life are shut off."

p. 321 "Why do you read then?" "Partly for pleasure, because it's a habit and I'm just as uncomfortable if I don't read is if I don't smoke, and partly to know myself. When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me; I've got out of the book all that's any use to me, and I can't get anything more if I read it a dozen times."

p. 384 They thought him reasonable and praised his common sense; but he knew that his placid expression was no more than a mask, assumed unconsciously, which acted like the protective coloring of butterflies; and himself was astonished at the weakness of his will. It seemed to him that he was swayed by every light emotion, as though he were a leaf in the wind, and when passion seized him he was powerless. He had no self-control. He merely seemed to possess it because he was so indifferent to many of the things which moved other people.

p. 405 "You talk glibly of giving up drinking, but it's the only thing I've got left now. What do you think life would be to me without it? Can you understand the happiness I get out of my absinthe? I yearn for it; and when I drink it I savour every drop, and afterwards I feel my soul swimming in ineffable happiness. It disgusts you. You are a puritan and in your heart you despise sensual pleasures. Sensual pleasures are the most violent and the most exquisite. I am a man blessed with vivid senses, and I have indulged them with all my soul. I have to pay the penalty now, and I am ready to pay." [dying of cirrhosis]

p. 422 "May I see what you're reading?" asked Philip, who could never pass a book without looking at it.

p. 432 "Perhaps religion is the best school of morality. It is like one of those drugs you gentlemen use in medicine which carries another in solution: it is of no efficacy in itself, but enables the other to be absorbed. You take your morality because it is combined with religion; you lose the religion and tho morality stays behind. A man is more likely to be a good man if he has learned goodness through the love of God than through a perusal of Herbert Spencer."

p. 524 His insignificance was turned to power, and he felt himself suddenly equal with the cruel fate which had seemed to persecute him; for, if life was meaningless, the world was robbed of its cruelty.

p. 524-525 [photo] Persian rug pattern analogy - weaving your own pattern, simple or complex, is the meaning of life, for beauty's sake.

P. 601 Philip had never been able to surmount what he acknowledged was a defect in his resolute desire for a well-ordered life, and that was his passion for living in the future; and no sooner was he settled in his work at the hospital than he had busied himself with arrangements for his travels.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion, r. Feb. 2018

p. 8 Julie seemed unimpressed, and in reviewing the interaction later, I realized that Gene must have lied to her about his reason for not being present. This was presumably to protect Julie from feeling that her lecture was unimportant to Gene and to provide a justification for a less prestigious speaker being sent as a substitute. It seems hardly possible to analyze such a complex situation involving deceit and supposition of another person's emotional response, and then prepare your own plausible lie, all while someone is waiting for you to reply to a question. Yet that is exactly what people expect you to be able to do.

p. 48 "The human brain is wired to focus on differences in its environment - so it can rapidly discern a predator. If I installed pictures or other decorative objects, I would notice them for a few days and then my brain would ignore them. If I want to see art, I go to the gallery. The paintings there are of higher quality, and the total expenditure over time is less than the purchase price of cheap posters."

p. 57 I had seen the view when I bought the apartment. It did not change much in different conditions. And the only times I just sat were when I was waiting for an appointment or if I was reflecting on a problem, in which case interesting surroundings would be a distraction.

p. 60 Although my parents continued to make routine, ritual contact, it was my assessment that they had lost interest in me some years ago. Their duty had been completed when I was able to support myself.

p. 61 "An image of Isis with an inscription: Sum omnia quae fuerunt suntque eruntque ego. 'I am all that has been, is, and will be.'" I hoped I had read the Latin correctly.

p. 110 Research consistently shows that the risks to health outweigh the benefits of drinking alcohol. My argument is that the benefits to my mental health justify the risks. Alcohol seems to both calm me down and elevate my mood, a paradoxical but pleasant combination. And it reduces my discomfort in social situations.

p. 276 I need not be visibly odd. I could engage in the protocols that others followed and move undetected among them. And how could I be sure that other people were not doing the same - playing the game to be accepted but suspecting all the time that they were different?

p. 277 I had a great deal of valuable knowledge - about genetics, computers, aikido, karate, hardware, chess, wine, cocktails, dancing, sexual positions, social protocols, and the probability of a fifty-six-game hitting streak occurring in the history of baseball. I knew so much shit and I still couldn't fix myself.

The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey, r. May 2015

p. 17 Time is relative, said Heraclitus a long time ago, and distance a function of velocity. Since the ultimate goal of transport technology is the annihilation of space, the compression of all Being into one pure point, it follows that six-packs [of beer] help.

p. 35 He had gazed upon this scene a hundred times in his life so far; he knew that he might have only a hundred more.

p. 40 The brightest thing in Abbzug's dome was a brain. She was too wise to linger long with any fad, though she tested them all. With an intelligence too fine to be violated by ideas, she had learned that she was searching not for self-transformation (she liked herself) but for something good to do.

p. 60 "The wilderness once offered men a plausible way of life," the doctor said. "Now it functions as a psychiatric refuge. Soon there will be no wilderness."

p. 62 Far beyond those galloping galaxies, or perhaps all too present to be seen, lurked God. The gaseous vertebrate.

p. 63 Tho entertainment palled. Fatigue like gravitation pulled at limbs and eyelids. As they had come so they departed, first Abbzug, then the two women from San Diego. The ladies first. Not because they were the weaker sex - they were not - but simply because they had more sense. Men on an outing feel obliged to stay up drinking to the vile and bilious end, jabbering, mumbling and maundering through the blear, to end up finally on hands and knees, puking on innocent sand, befouling God's sweet earth. The manly tradition.

p. 65 The river in its measureless sublimity rolled softly by, whispering of time. Which heals, they say, all. But does it? The stars looked kindly down. A lie. A wind in the willows suggested sleep. And nightmares. Smith pushed more drift pine into the fire, and a scorpion, dormant in a crack deep in the wood, was horribly awakened, too late. No one noticed the mute agony. Deep in the solemn canyon, under the fiery stars, peace reigned generally.

p. 154 "You're a verbal cripple. You use obscenities as a crutch. Obscenity is a crutch for crippled minds."

p. 237 While outside in the fields of desert summer the melons ripened at their leisure in the nest of their vines, and a restless rooster, perched on the roof of the hencoop, fired his premature ejaculation at the waning moon, and in the pasture the horses lifted noble Roman heads to stare in the night at something humans cannot see.

p. 336 What do we really know? … The world of dreams, the agony of love and the foreknowledge of death. That is all we know. And all we need to know? Challenge that statement. I challenge that statement. With what? I don't know.