My Top Highlights 🖍️

Published 27 days ago • 3 min read

LIFE ON URTH - Episode 093

This week, the specialist exam is (finally) coming up. So for this episode, I chose a time-saving format: my favorite highlights from fiction books I’ve read recently.

Fiction is always a bit of a tension field for me, because my inner critic automatically labels it as unproductive and keeps bothering me with pressure and guilt.

A helpful compromise: I also collect highlights while reading fiction.

That turns it into a hunt for particularly beautiful phrases, narrative wisdom, and interesting facts. It also helps me stay attentive and not just skim through the pages.

Tip: With the Readwise app, you can also capture highlights from physical books using your phone camera and manage them easily. That’s how I was able to pull up the following passages within just a few minutes:

“The imprecision of our language is a feature; it best represents the superlative fact of human existence: that our own emotions—even our souls—are themselves imprecise. Our words, like our hearts, are weapons still hot from the forging, beating themselves into new shapes each time we swing them.”

— Brandon Sanderson, Tress of the Emerald Sea

“That’s the trouble with dirt. It sticks to you even if you’re only the man throwing it.”
— Ashok Ferrey, Hot Butter Cuttlefish

“I should have been more kind. That is something a person will never regret. You will never say to yourself when you are old, Ah, I wish I was not good to that person.”
— Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed

"Interesting," the cat said. "Not that I totally follow you. Cats can get by without names. We go by smell, shape, things of this nature. As long as we know, there's no worries for us."

“Nakata understands completely. But you know, Mr Otsuka, people don’t work that way. We need dates and names to remember all kinds of things.”
The cat gave a snort. “Sounds like a pain to me.”
— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Jenny Fields discovered that you got more respect from shocking other people than you got from trying to live your own life with a little privacy.”
— John Irving, The World According to Garp

“In all things, across all avenues, a choice must be made: whether to follow love, truth, or power. That choice will consume the chooser. If he follows only love then his wellbeing will be constantly at the mercy of another, though his highs will be sublime. If he follows truth then it will be a lonely journey, but potentially a noble one. If he should follow power though, not only will he come to know a desperate and revolting loneliness, but he will also never experience even a drop of satisfaction in anything.”
— Exurb1a, The Fifth Science

What’s the best book you’ve read recently?
I’m always happy to get recommendations 🤓

✒️ Quote of the Week: "Do not make being quiet into a task to be performed. Relax. There is nothing to practice." -Nisargadatta Maharaj

🎧 Song of the Week: Lauge - Undercurrent

📺 Video of the Week: A Simulation of Auditory and Visual Hallucinations in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Mania

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All the best,

Adrian / Urth

Can’t wait until next week’s edition? Check out my essays.