This has to be one of my favorite books of all time. If you’re reading this, just pick it up, don’t look up the premise.
To me, this book touches on several topics that made me ponder, namely,
- what intelligence means, and how you perceive people of different intellects
- what it means to want friends as a person who is different, and how we think of others around us in a large group.
- loneliness. You may be surrounded by people and yet feel lonely, because sometimes no one gets you.
- empathy, support systems
- …
Honestly, the book club discussions we’ve had on this have been hot, and this is one I would revisit time and time again.
Some top tier quotes from the book,
I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.
Now I understand that one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you’ve believed in all your life aren’t true, and that nothing is what it appears to be.
Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love. This is something else I’ve discovered for myself very recently. I present it to you as a hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain.
A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows hunger.