I’m in the middle of my fourth reading of Giovanni’s Room–the third reading this year. I don’t think there’s much left for me to underline, but I’m sure I’ll find a way.

“People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all—a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named—but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not.”