#52 | Fiction excerpts that shaped me
Each day in October 2025, I'm collecting passages that have shaped my life. These are the words that made me.
S is traveling again so I’m on my own once more. (In general, I’m a fan of having 1-2 quarters every year to yourself!) My rhythms change; I’m in control of everything again; I get to reflect/focus/sleep a lot.
For the next 31 days in October, I’m going to collect passages which have really moved me. Every day, I’ll recall one from memory, look it up, and record it here.
I’ve always enjoyed reading, especially fiction, ever since I was a kid. I’ve thought about a project like this for years now, and have saved plenty of passages in various places throughout the years strewn all over, but I’ve never consolidated them.
Now is the time! ✊
Experiencing art is genuinely one of life’s great joys. Sometimes, I’ll just be randomly standing in the grocery aisle and think of a scene. Or at the airport, and think of some dialogue. In particular, reading good fiction is a gift. But then recalling the memorable passage is the gift again, twice over. (A “memory dividend.”) The writer has such immense power: if they do it right, they’re able to attach a specific memory to a sequence of words whereby their simple incantation will instantly conjure a constellation of character/story/setting/feeling.
What wizardry!
This is why consuming art is so important to being human. Like Robin Williams famously said, “…these are what we stay alive for.”
Sunday - October 12, 2025
“It is my belief — and never have I so hoped that I am mistaken — that we are all facing dark and difficult times… A week ago, a student was taken from our midst.
“Remember Cedric. Remember, if a time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort. Remember Cedric Diggory.”
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000) - J.K. Rowling
Saturday - October 11, 2025
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
Pride and Prejudice (1813) - Jane Austen
Friday - October 10, 2025
Somewhere along the way, men all got together and agreed that we’d all pretend not to understand women. For the most part, this is bullshit. Right now, as the first signs of hurt betray this façade of feminist anger, I know that she’s interpreted what I just said as me telling her that she’s not good-looking . . . or at least not as good-looking as Katie. But I’m so mad at her that I let her keep thinking it.
Domestic Violets (2011) - Matthew Norman
Thursday - October 9, 2025
Diane and Jason had been born minutes apart but were obviously fraternal rather than identical siblings; no one but their mother called them twins. Jason used to say they were the product of “dipolar sperm penetrating oppositely charged eggs.” Diane, whose IQ was nearly as impressive as Jason’s but who kept her vocabulary on a shorter leash, compared them to “different prisoners who escaped from the same cell.”
Spin (2005) -
Wednesday - October 8, 2025
Everybody falls, and we all land somewhere.
So we rented a room on the third floor of a colonial-style hotel in Padang where we wouldn’t be noticed for a while… the hotel was secure and the stars were out in all their scattered glory. The peak of the Archway was the brightest thing in the sky now, a delicate silver letter U (Unknown, Unknowable) written upside down by a dyslexic God. I held Diane’s hand while we watched it fade."
Spin (2005) -
Tuesday - October 7, 2025
“We call it the Drowned Garden, though I don’t know why. The plants aren’t just plants, they’re thoughts and feelings. A new thought happens and a new plant springs up. A feeling fades away and the plant dies. Some of the more common ones are always in bloom—fear, anger, happiness, love, envy. They’re quite unruly, they grow like weeds. Certain basic mathematical ideas never go away either. But others are quite rare. Complex concepts, extreme or subtle emotions. Awe and wonder are harder to find than they once were. Though there—I think those irises are a kind of awe. Once in a while you even see a new one.”
Julia stooped to one knee—an awesome sight, given the scale of her divine frame.
“Look. This one is very rare… This is a feeling that you had, Quentin,” she said. “Once, a very long time ago. A rare one. This is how you felt when you were eight years old, and you opened one of the Fillory books for the first time, and you felt awe and joy and hope and longing all at once. You felt them very strongly, Quentin. You dreamed of Fillory then, with a power and an innocence that not many people ever experience. That’s where all this began for you. You wanted the world to be better than it was.” (pg. 389)
The Magician’s Land (2014) -
Monday - October 6, 2025
“But you, Quentin, you I understand. You are like me. You have ambition. You want to be a great wizard. Gandalf, maybe. Merlin. Dumb-bell-door.”
“Sure,” [Quentin] said. “Why not.”
“But you will not be great. You are clever, yes—you have good head.”
He reached over and rapped on Quentin’s head with his knuckles.
“Don’t do that.”
But Mayakovsky was unstoppable, a drunk best man hell-bent on giving an inappropriate toast.
“Fine head. Better than most. But sadly for you there are many heads like it. One hundred. One thousand maybe.”
“I’m sure you’re right.” No point in denying it. [Quentin] leaned against the cool, oiled metal of a drill press. It felt reassuringly stable, an ally at this back.
“Five hundred,” Plum said generously. She boosted herself up on a table. “Be fair.”
“You will never be great. You know nothing of greatness. You want to see? I will show you greatness.”
He waved his arm expansively at the darkened workbenches, and all through the room metal and glass stirred and glowed and came alive. Engines moved, wheels turned, flames lit."
“This is my museum. Museum of Mayakovsky.”
And he showed them what he’d built in the long Antarctic winters. (pg. 126)
The Magician’s Land (2014) -
Sunday - October 5, 2025
Afterward he remembered almost nothing of the week that followed. The whole thing was very clinical. Reduced to its technical essence, it was a problem of resource management, of nurturing and guarding and fanning the little flickering flame of life and consciousness within his body as the entire continent of Antarctica tried to leach away the heat and sugar and water that kept it burning.
The Magicians (2009) -
Saturday - October 4, 2025
Key’s theory, which Patrick had mocked as the “Virgin Apocalypse,” was that all modern hate groups were really just incel grievances in disguise. It’s a historical fact that one of the key precursors to mass violence in a society is simply an excess of young, unmarried men. The really unpopular part of Key’s theory, the one that had caused a lot of colleagues to stop talking to her in the hallway, was that the smart societies knew you could deal with this problem simply by finding some excuse to go to war. Through all of history, wars were a way to burn off your excess young men, like venting heat from an engine.
I’m Starting to Worry About this Black Box of Doom (2025) -
Friday - October 3, 2025
“I see none in discussing it.”
“Mr. Roark, we’re alone here. Why don’t you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us.”
“But I don’t think of you.”
Toohey’s face had an expression of attentiveness, of listening quietly to something as simple as fate.
The Fountainhead (1943) - Ayn Rand
Thursday - October 2, 2025
“I’ll give you an A- on that one. They’re writers who have an accumulating effect on the masculine side of the American national character. There’s no one word for it, though it is a specific thing: individualistic, competence-worshiping, short-term optimism and long-term existentialism. ‘There may be nothing after I die but I sure as hell will do the job right while I’m here, even though I’m surrounded by idiots.’ You see the pattern?”
The Hemingway Hoax (1990) - Joe Haldeman
Wednesday - October 1, 2025
If Marx at twenty-two had a problem, it was that he was attracted to too many things and people. Marx’s favorite adjective was “interesting.” The world seemed filled with interesting books to read, interesting plays and movies to see, interesting games to play, interesting food to taste, and interesting people to have sex with and sometimes even to fall in love with. To Marx, it seemed foolish not to love as many things as you could. In the first months she knew him, Sadie disparaged Marx to Sam by calling him “the romantic dilettante.”
But for Marx, the world was like a breakfast at a five-star hotel in an Asian country—the abundance of it was almost overwhelming. Who wouldn’t want a pineapple smoothie, a roast pork bun, an omelet, picked vegetables, sushi, and a green-tea-flavored croissant? They were all there for the taking and delicious, in their own way. (pg. 92)
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (2022) -
Tuesday - September 30, 2025
“So, what’s the deal with you and Sadie?” Marx asked Sam on a sweltering night in early August. The air-conditioning had gone out in the apartment, which was already hot from the computer equipment they were running. To try to keep cool, Marx and Sam were wearing nothing but their boxer shorts and pressing cold bottles to their foreheads. It was rare that the three of them weren’t together, but on this night, Sadie had left the house to meet with a friend from high school was was in town and, possibly, to escape the heat of the computers for a while.” (pg. 91)
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (2022) -