Latest interesting excerpts #1

Some interesting excerpts from most recent reads - #1.

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Every talent must unfold itself in fighting, a love of wrestling, an inherent incapacity to unite for any length of time, an absolute dedication to the idea of contest and the virtue of ambition.

Never overlook the obvious. Lie down, take it easy. Discipline yourself. Aren't you happy?

You live in a world of names. That's why I have the charity to tell you this.

Beautiful Losers, Leonard Cohen

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"I'm resourceful", Price is saying. "I'm creative, I'm young, unscrupulous, highly motivated, highly skilled. In essece what I'm saying is that society cannot afford to lose me. I'm an asset."

I'm ethical, tolerant, I mean I'm extremely satisfied with my life, I'm optimistic about the future - I mean, aren't you?

American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis

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Atticus's office in the court-house contained little more than a hat rack, a spittoon, a checker-board and an unsullied Code of Alabama. His first two clients were the last two persons hanged in the Maycomb County jail. Atticus had urged them to accept the state's generosity in allowing them to plead guilty to second-degree murder and escape with their lives, but they were Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass. The Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb's leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defence for anybody. They persisted in pleading Not Guilty to first-degree murder, so there was nothing much Atticus could do for his clients except be present at their departure, an occasion that was probably the beginning of my father's profound distaste for the practice of criminal law.

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Travelling, a short in-depth view

Ana just asked me what travelling means to me. Point blank question. She only requested three lines, before I knew it, I wrote half a page, so something must have been seething with expectation. Expectation probably connected not in the least marginally with the mountain trip to come on the 1st of August.

If it's about the idea of travelling - I suppose it's a very important means of bringing back harmony. When you go visiting new places, all your five senses are alight. It's not enough to see anymore. You need to touch, to hear better, to sniff and arch your body. You're reminded to keep an open mind, to walk carefully, to actually pay attention to what others say. You feel a healthy constructive fear again - who is that, where can you find shelter, how long is it before sunset. You feel joy for small successes like finding a street, or finding a clear trail in the woods. Ultimately, you stumble upon a hefty load of new and awe, in which you always irreverently struggle to find the familiar morsel of mundane. No personas, just you with your true heartfelt reactions and actions. All this is worlds apart from the prozaic act of  living day after day in your town, going to and coming from school and work. If you do that for too long, it's bound to drown you in routine. Here's where the bit about 'bringing back harmony' comes in. All the routine and pretense is washed away as you find equilibrium with your inner self, anew. I know i got slightly poetic, but this is truly how i feel when i go to the mountains or travelling in general, it's always a travel inside myself first and foremost.

Node.js second thoughts

Been planning for a while to approach the node.js direction to tackle a distributed system project, but my proletarian endeavours stand foiled yet again: this adamant article here makes me think node.js isn't so bad for personal/small projects but it might cause more harm than benefits in a real-world situation. Node.js is cancer?