Books and quotations

I'm reading the book Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. I'm almost halfway done right now. It's not a particularly well-written book, if compared to Hemingway or Baldwin or Morrison or Dos Passos or numerous other well-acclaimed authors. But the book is serving its purpose. There is a suspenseful plot that keeps me turning the pages and it's a nice escape from everyday life. After recently reading a heavy history book, this is exactly what the doctor ordered.

I'm not too sure yet what I want to read next. Not that I have to decide for about another week, but right now I'm leaning toward either non-fiction regarding immigration issues, or some philosophy by Marcuse, or more likely than not, another good fiction work, probably a classic, like something by Cather. We'll see; I'll keep you posted.

Now, some random quotations from books that I've previously read:

"I think that humans are the products of struggles and difficulties, that problems gradually mold a person in the same way that a lathe shapes a piece of material -- in this case, the matter and spirit of a human being." -- Fidel Castro, Fidel: My Early Years

"When do we say that a man has put his life in order? It is when he has achieved an understanding of his life and conformed his conduct to what he believes to be true." -- Albert Camus, Between Hell and Reason: Essays from the Resistance Newspaper Combat, 1944-1947

"don't try to cloud my healthy eye with your melancholy breath!" -- Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

"Each of us must be tempered in some fire. Nobody had more to do with choosing the fire that tempered me than myself, and instead of finding fault with the fire I give thanks that I had the metal to take the temper and hold it." -- Jack Black, You Can't Win

"Man lives only to learn. And if he learns it is because that is the nature of his lot, for good or bad." -- Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge