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21 " Books," he said, "are like mushrooms. They grow when you are not looking. Books increase by rule of compound interest: one interest leads to another interest, and this compounds into third. Next, you have so much interest there is no space in closet. "
― Tom Rachman , The Rise & Fall of Great Powers
22 " You can’t dread what you can’t experience. The only death we experience is that of other people. That’s as bad as it gets. And that’s bad enough, surely. "
― Tom Rachman , The Imperfectionists
23 " If history has taught us anything, Arthur muses, it is that men with mustaches must never achieve positions of power. "
24 " People kept their books, she thought, not because they were likely to read them again but because these objects contained the past--the texture of being oneself at a particular place, at a particular time, each volume a piece of one's intellect, whether the work itself had been loved or despised or had induced a snooze on page forty. "
25 " She is a wonderful nerd, and he hopes this won't change. "
26 " Our worst fear isn't the end of life but the end of memories. "
27 " Here is a fact: nothing in all civilization has been as productive as ludicrous ambition. Whatever its ills, nothing has created more. Cathedrals, sonatas, encyclopedias: love of God was not behind them, nor love of life. But the love of man to be worshiped by man. "
28 " Journalism is a bunch of dorks pretending to be alpha males. "
29 " Nothing epitomizes the futility of human striving quite like aspartame. "
30 " I got myself into a tangle. I tied myself in knots. I built and I built–heaven knows I have done that well. Those skyscrapers, full of tenants, floor after floor, and not a single room containing you. "
31 " What's remarkable about fiction is that it places you in the unusual position of having no trajectory. You stand aside, motives abandoned for the duration. The characters have the trajectories now, while you just observe. And this stirs compassion that, in real life, is so often obscured by our own motives. "
― Tom Rachman
32 " She doesn't remember the twentieth century. Isn't that terrifying? "
33 " The Internet is to news," he said, "what car horns are to music. "
34 " One becomes more of a shit as one gets older. "
35 " Anything that's worth anything is complicated. "
36 " Good reporting and good behavior are mutually exclusive. "
37 " She has been dreading tomorrow ever since it happened the first time. "
38 " ...news' is often a polite way of saying 'editor's whim. "
39 " People kept their books, she thought, not because they were likely to read them again but because these objects contained the past—the texture of being oneself at a particular place, at a particular time, each volume a piece of one’s intellect, whether the work itself had been loved or despised or had induced a snooze on page forty. "
40 " Nobody likes to be understood without warning. "
― Tom Rachman , The Italian Teacher