Cloud Atlas — Alex Priest

Highlights

Glass and peace alike betray proof of fragility under repeated blows.

A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.

I don’t really agree with this one anymore. If you have any compassion and respect for yourself and your own time, then in most cases a half-read book should be a sign of pride. You were discerning enough to put it down and read something better (or at least that resonates more with you where you are in that moment).

That love loves fidelity, she riposted, is a myth woven by men from their insecurities.

…conduct your life in such a way that, when your train breaks down in the eve of your years, you have a warm, dry car driven by a loved one—or a hired one, it matters not—to take you home.

Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms round the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage.

Truth is singular. Its “versions” are mistruths.

…there ain’t no journey what don’t change you some.

Travel far enough, you meet yourself.

…ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only “rights,” the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful.

“Freedom!” is the fatuous jingle of our civilization, but only those deprived of it have the barest inkling re: what the stuff actually is.

Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible.

”& only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!” Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?

Jesus this is so good.