the writing nib

Tag: books

  • Chasing Happiness

    A true Jonas Brothers fan must’ve felt something from reading that title.

    But, sorry, this isn’t about the Jonas Brothers.

    I’ve been trying to read two books for months now; Born A Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah and Radiance of Tomorrow by Ishmael Beah. The former is an autobiographical book on Trevor Noah’s childhood. Now if you don’t know who Trevor Noah is please look him up, he’s very very smart! The latter is a fictional book by Ishmael Beah about a community recovering from war. He also wrote (and lived) A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, which was a book about his time as a child soldier during the Sierra Leone Civil War.

    Both of these books make me sad whenever I think of them, although they have happy endings (I haven’t really finished them, but in my head these are the “endings”): Trevor goes on to become one of the greatest comedians of the 21st century (he hosts The Daily Show) and of course, a community recovering from war is a good thing.

    But being someone who has been chasing happiness for a long time, I don’t know if these are the kind of books I should be reading because the process of getting to that happy ending involves a lot of emotional moments. The same applies for the Netflix series, The Spy, which seems very interesting, but it gives me this feeling of melancholy that I can’t seem to shake off even after deciding to quit the show nearly three weeks ago. And for some reason, just yesterday I found myself trying to watch another episode.

    That’s the thing about sadness, once you feel it too often it becomes your “comfort” feeling and you keep wanting to stay in that state because the feeling of being happy becomes too foreign. Happiness shouldn’t be something that we have to chase. We shouldn’t have to tire our minds and emotions in the pursuit of something that should be a constant in our lives because life is meant to be beautiful.

    I don’t think I know where I’m going with this post.

    Maybe just to say this, if you know you’re depressed or could be triggered into depression then please stay away from sad books, TV shows, songs and films. You might say “it’s just art”, but sometimes consuming art comes with a price that no one should have to pay.

    Life should be about enjoying things you love – even when people make fun of you for loving One Direction music. You shouldn’t have to chase happiness because happiness should begin every time you do something, including the most normal things like grocery shopping or looking at memes.

    OK maybe it is about the Jonas Brothers just a bit. Happiness Begins is their latest album’s name and it is amazing!

  • Here’s the Breakfast Menu at Tiffany’s

    I have admired big cities for a long time, mainly because I come from a big city myself, sort of. I actually grew up in a large suburban town in Dar es Salaam, the largest city in East Africa, but during the few weekend nights I found myself in the city I would carefully stare at all the people, the chaos and the colorful billboards. Everything made me admire the city and to this day I tell myself that I shall one day live in a big city. My love for big cities grew during my high school days when I had to pass through the city each morning and afternoon. I could make a list and mention other things including Taylor Swift’s Welcome to New York, Owl City’s New York City and basically every DC or Marvel superhero movie ever created that paints the big city as this place where all the action happens. And to be very honest, all the action does happen in the big cities. You have to go and make it happen. Breakfast At Tiffany’s by Truman Capote is just one of many artistic works that prove this.

    Miss Holiday ‘Holly’ Golightly is a young New Yorker who makes me say ‘go get it!’ to myself. In Owl City’s New York City he sings, “you never know if you never go” and I think to myself that Holly may have had a conversation like this with herself before she moved to New York. Even though what she “achieved” is not really what many of us think of achieving in this day and age, the fact that she went and became someone (being a “nobody” before) in a big city is enough. Holly, who is the central character, is a controversial one because of her occasional racist remarks that immediately prompted me to cheer when the black police officer slapped her after she said, “Get them cotton-pickin’ hands off of me, you dreary, drivelling old bull-dyke.” We can go around saying it was a different era, but the truth is that Holly is what we call the b-word today. I do, however, admire how she created herself. To me, changing one’s name goes beyond the legal process, which is why I am always interested in those ‘change my name and move to a different city’ jokes in movies and TV. If you do plan on doing it, I recommend you follow Holly’s example, have Holly’s breakfast menu.

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    Holly knows what she wants and she goes after it even when the odds seem to not be in her favor. Though not explicitly mentioned in the story, you can see how Holly believes in herself; her beauty, mind and her social skills-she doesn’t have anything else. This reminds me of a conversation about optimism I had with some friends a few days ago. I think this is what they meant because looking at my own life and putting myself in Holly’s position I would have definitely never made it to Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires or whatever part of Africa she ended up in if I did not have the optimism she had. Young and with an unshakable lust for life, Holly is what we all wish we were. Some of us have probably given up on that vision because of how our modern society is built and many other factors, but as my high school history teacher used to say, “it’s not the end of the world” and we all know you can have breakfast during any time of the day.

    Anyway, here are some quotes from Breakfast at Tiffany’s that I loved, hoping you love them too:

    They were large eyes, a little blue, a little green, dotted with bits of brown: vari-coloured, like her hair; and, like her hair, they gave out a lively warm light.

    “I can’t get excited by a man until he’s forty two.”

    “You can beat your brains out for her, and she’ll hand you horses**t on a platter.”

    “Even wearing glasses this thick; even when she opens her mouth and you don’t know if she’s a hillbilly or an Okie or what.”

    “I want to still be me when I wake up one fine morning and have breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

    “I don’t want to own anything until I know I’ve found the place where me and things belong together.”

    “I told you: you can make yourself love anybody”

    He’d been put together with care, his brown head and bull-fighter’s figure had an exactness, a perfection, like an apple, an orange, something nature has made just right.

    “I like a man who sees the humor”

    Aprils have never meant much to me, autumns seem that season of beginning, spring; which is how I felt sitting with Holly on the railings of the boathouse porch.

    “Everybody has to feel superior to somebody. But it’s customary to present a little proof before you take the privilege.”

    “I’m not smirking. I’m smiling. You’re the most amazing person.”
    “I suppose I am.”

    “Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell.”

    “But you can’t give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they’re strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That’s how you’ll end up, Mr Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You’ll end up looking at the sky.”

    “It’s better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.”

    “I love New York, even though it isn’t mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.”

    So the days, the last days, blow about in memory, hazy, autumnal, all alike as leaves.

    I loved her enough to forget myself, my self-pitying despairs, and be content that something she thought happy was going to happen.

    “A girl doesn’t read this sort of thing without her lipstick.”

    “Anyway, home is where you feel at home. I’m still looking.”

  • The Perks of Reading The Perks of Being A Wallflower

    I remember when I was in high school. I hated every moment of it. I told myself I would try hard to “participate” while in university. And I am trying. Trying.

    In The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky shows us how challenging it can be to “participate”, especially when you’re what most people call “weird”. The book is about Charlie. It’s a story about friendship and how powerful and helpful friendships are, especially during the worst of times. It also shows what goes on in the mind of a teenage boy, and I guess every young adult ever. In one incident Charlie asks himself, “I don’t know who decided these things”. Because I also don’t know who decides things like who’s cool or weird and beauty standards and what music is considered to be “great taste”.

    Written in the form of letters, The Perks of Being a Wallflower almost makes the reader feel as though she/he is Charlie or as if Charlie is a real person and the reader just found his stuff lying around somewhere and decided to have a look. But I strongly believe that Stephen Chbosky wanted it to be that the reader is the ‘friend’ who would “listen and understand”. He writes letters to an unknown “friend” throughout the book; about his joys and sorrows as a high school freshman. I think it’s okay to say that most of us can relate to Charlie’s experiences. For me, high school was tough, especially the last two years and I think university has been too-to some extent, except that there aren’t any adults to order me around now and give me curfews and all that.

    At first, I thought I wouldn’t get as many quotes from the book as I hoped to, but I ended up getting way more than I ever thought I would from any book of similar length. All these quotes have significant meanings, even though here they stand alone. Some are just funny, others are sad and others possess the kind of wisdom a young adult needs in order to get through life. All these meaningful quotes are the ‘perks’ I reference in the heading. They added something in my life and, in some instances, they changed it for the better. I hope they impact you in a good way too.

    I would recommend the book to everyone, not just kids in high school and university. It’s a good read and if you’re into films, you can check out the movie adaptation written and directed by the author himself. It’s a great film!

    Here are 64 quotes from The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

    So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be.

    Honestly, I don’t like doing dishes.

    I think it’s nice for stars to do interviews to make us think they are just like us, but to tell you the truth, I get the feeling that it’s all a big lie.

    It would be very nice to have a friend again. I would like that even more than a date.

    The thing is some girls think they can actually change guys. And what’s funny is that if they actually did change them, they’d get bored. They’d have no challenge left.

    And I wonder if anyone is really happy. I hope they are. I really hope they are.

    Sometimes people use thought to not participate in life.

    We accept the love we think we deserve.

    I feel infinite.

    You see things, you keep quiet about them. And you understand.

    And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.

    So, I guess Zen is a day like this when you are part of the air and remember things.

    I have decided that maybe I want to write when I grow up. I just don’t know what I would write. (ME TOO)

    I just think it’s bad when a boy looks at a girl and thinks that the way he sees the girl is better than the girl actually is. And I think it’s bad when the most honest way a boy can look at a girl is through a camera.

    I don’t know the significance of this, but I find it very interesting.

    They talk about books and issues and kiss in the rain.

    I always thought it would be fun to have “glory days”. Then, I would have stories to tell my children and golf buddies.

    Maybe these are my glory days, and I’m not even realizing it because they don’t involve a ball.

    Old pictures look very rugged and young, and the people in the photographs always seem a lot happier than you are.

    I just hope I remember to tell my kids that they are as happy as I look in my old photographs. And I hope that they believe me.

    I don’t know if it’s better to have your kids be happy and not go to college. I don’t know if it’s better to be close with your daughter or make sure she has a better life than you do. I just don’t know.

    I hope the people who wrote those songs are happy. I hope that they feel it’s enough. I really do because they’ve made me happy. And I’m only one person.

    “write about me sometime.”
    “I will”

    It was the kind of kiss that I could never tell my friends about out loud. It was the kind of kiss that made me know that I was never so happy in my whole life.

    And I thought that all those little kids are going to grow up someday. And all of those little kids are going to do the things that we do. And they will all kiss someone someday. But for now, sledding is enough. I think it would be great if sledding were always enough, but it isn’t.

    And this one kid Mark at the party who gave me this came out of nowhere and looked at the sky and told me to see the stars. So, I looked up, and we were in this giant dome like a glass snowball, and Mark said that the amazing white stars were really only holes in the black glass of the dome, and when you went to heaven, the glass broke away, and there was nothing but a whole sheet of star white, which is brighter than anything but doesn’t hurt your eyes. It was vast and open and thinly quiet, and I felt so small.

    This one time when it’s peaceful outside, and you’re seeing things move, and you don’t want to, and everyone is asleep. And all the books you’ve read have been read by other people. And all then songs you’ve loved have been heard by other people. And that girl that’s pretty to you is pretty to other people. And you know that if you looked at these facts when you were happy, you would feel great because you are describing “unity”.

    It’s like when you are excited about a girl and you see a couple holding hands, and you feel so happy for them. And other times you see the same couple, and they make you so mad. And all you want is to always feel happy for them because you know that if you do, then it means that you’re happy, too.

    Everyone is always comparing everyone with everyone and because of that, it discredits people.

    It was a movie smile in slow motion, and then everything was okay.

    I decided to do my math homework, which was a mistake because math has never made any sense to me. (ME TOO!)

    “do you guess or do you know?”
    “I guess.”
    “good enough.”

    You should tell her how nice her outfit is because her outfit is her choice whereas her face isn’t.

    Because if you force her to do something she doesn’t want to do, then you’re in big trouble, mister…

    And to tell you the truth I don’t want to be exposed to all these great things if it means that I’ll have to hear Mary Elizabeth talk about all the great things she exposed me to all the time.

    I would give someone a record so they could love the record, not so they would always know that I gave it to them.

    Maybe this is the way things are supposed to be, but it doesn’t feel right.

    My father got a raise, and my mother didn’t because she doesn’t get paid for housework.

    Things get worse before they get better because that’s what my psychiatrist says, but this is a worse that feels too big.

    I look at the teachers and wonder why they’re here. If they like their job. Or us.

    I don’t know how much longer I can keep going without a friend.

    It’s much easier not to know things sometimes. And to have French fries with your mom be enough.

    There’s nothing like the deep breaths after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore stomach for the right reasons.

    It’s just hard to see a friend hurt this much. Especially when you can’t do anything except “be there”.

    I love that expression. College of my choice. Safety school is another favorite.

    I never even knew she liked movies, but I guess she does. She calls them “films.”

    I think the idea is that every person has to live for his own life and then make the choice to share it with other people. Maybe that is what makes people “participate.”

    And I was happy because they were happy.

    Everything was as good as it could be.

    And I think everyone is special in their own way.

    And there it is. The city. A million lights and buildings and everything seems as exciting as the first time you saw it. It really is a grand entrance.

    Then, we were quiet for the rest of the song. She held me a little closer. I held her a little closer. And we kept dancing. It was the one time all day that I really wanted the clock to stop. And just be there for a long time.

    She wasn’t bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just takes time.

    You can’t just sit there and put everybody’s lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can’t. you have to do things.

    It’s just that I don’t want to be somebody’s crush. If somebody likes me, I want them to like the real me, not what they think I am. And I don’t want them to carry it around inside. I want them to show me, so I can feel it, too. And if they do something I don’t like, I’ll tell them.

    But right now I’m here with you. And I want to know where you are, what you need, and what you want to do.

    I’m so sorry that I wasted your time because you really do mean a lot to me and I hope you have a very nice life because I really think you deserve it. I really do. I hope you do, too. Okay, then. Goodbye.

    So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we’ll never know most of them. But even if we don’t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them.

    I think that if I ever have kids, and they’re upset, I won’t tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn’t change the fact that they were upset.

    And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn’t really change the fact that you have what you have. Good and bad.

    Maybe it’s good to put things in perspective, but sometimes, I think that the only perspective is to really be there.

    Because it’s okay to feel things. And be who you are about them.

    And I just thought how great it was to have friends and a family.

  • 25 Quotes from Looking for Alaska by John Green

    25 Quotes from Looking for Alaska by John Green

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  • 52 Quotes from ‘Turtles All The Way Down’ by John Green

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