## Metadata - Author: [[Eleanor Catton]] - Full Title: The Luminaries - Category: #books ## Highlights - He regarded Moody’s stiffness as if it were a fashionable collar, made in some aristocratic style, that was unbearably confining to the wearer—he saw all conventions of polite society in this way, as useless ornamentations—and ([Location 160](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BAXFAJC&location=160)) - He was indulgent toward the open spaces of other men’s futures, but he was impatient with the shuttered quarters of their pasts. ([Location 479](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BAXFAJC&location=479)) - One could know a thousand women, Gascoigne thought; one could take a different girl every night for years and years—but sooner or later, the new lovers would do little more than call to mind the old, and one would be forced to wander, lost, in that reflective maze of endless comparison, forever disappointed, forever turning back. ([Location 3389](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BAXFAJC&location=3389)) - Dusk was falling, bringing with it a rapid drop in temperature, and turning the standing water at the roadside from brown to glossy blue. There was little traffic save for the infrequent cart or lone rider making for the warmth and light of the town ahead—still some two miles distant, though one could hear the roar of the ocean already, a dull, pitchless sound, and above it, the infrequent cry of a sea-bird, the call floating thin and weightless above the sound of the rain. ([Location 4693](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BAXFAJC&location=4693)) - Harald Nilssen was used to commanding public attention, an authority he achieved through the use of wit, declamation, and comical self-styling. He became very quickly bored when he was required, for whatever reason, to inhabit the periphery of a crowded room. His vanity required constant stimulation, and constant proof that the ongoing creation of his selfhood was a project that he himself controlled. ([Location 4770](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BAXFAJC&location=4770)) - The hold was very dark; however, with each jibe and yaw, the ray of light through the open hatch would roll about the cargo hold, as a roving glance. ([Location 5158](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BAXFAJC&location=5158)) - Certainly he had not done a thing to Crosbie’s cottage beyond stripping it of all that he could sell—and even that he had done by proxy. It was a hollow dividend that required no skill, no love, and no hours of patient industry: such a dividend could only be wasted, for it was borne from waste, and to waste it would return. ([Location 5343](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BAXFAJC&location=5343)) - “We spend our entire lives thinking about death. Without that project to divert us, I expect we would all be dreadfully bored. We would have nothing to evade, and nothing to forestall, and nothing to wonder about. Time would have no consequence.” ([Location 5624](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BAXFAJC&location=5624)) - a man ought never to trust another man’s evaluation of a third man’s disposition. For human temperament was a volatile compound of perception and circumstance; ([Location 5654](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BAXFAJC&location=5654)) - And I’m bound to pay every man a guinea more than he’s worth, for standing about and tying his shoelaces—and untying them—and conferencing about conferencing, until everyone’s out of breath, and I’m a thousand pounds down.” ([Location 6326](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BAXFAJC&location=6326)) - “There are many things that are yet arcane to me, Mrs. Wells, and I hope that I am a curious man; if I am interested in those truths that are yet unknown, it is only so that they might, in time, be made known—or, to put it more plainly, so that in time, I might come to know them.” “You are wonderfully free with one verb, I notice,” the widow returned. “What does it mean for you, Mr. Moody, to know something? I fancy you put rather a lot of stock in knowing—judging from the way you speak.” Moody smiled. “Why,” he said, “I suppose that to know a thing is to see it from all sides.” “To see it from all sides,” the widow repeated. “But I confess you catch me off guard; I have not spent any time working on the definition, and should not like to hear it quoted back to me—at least not until I have spent some time thinking about how I might defend it.” “No,” the widow agreed, “your definition leaves much to be desired. There are so many exceptions to the rule! How could one possibly see a spirit from all sides, for example? The notion is incredible.” Moody gave another short bow. “You are quite right to name that as an exception, Mrs. Wells. But I am afraid I do not believe a spirit can be known at all—by anyone—and I certainly do not believe a spirit can be seen. I do not mean to impugn your talents in the slightest—but there it is: I do not believe in spirits, categorically.” ([Location 7273](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BAXFAJC&location=7273)) - True feeling is always circular—either circular, or paradoxical—simply because its cause and its expression are two halves of the very same thing! Love cannot be reduced to a catalogue of reasons why, and a catalogue of reasons cannot be put together into love. Any man who disagrees with me has never been in love—not truly.” ([Location 9461](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BAXFAJC&location=9461)) - A solitary, unsupervised childhood, spent for the most part in his father’s library, had prepared Emery Staines for a great many possible lives without ever preferring one. ([Location 10275](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BAXFAJC&location=10275))