#24 09/12/2024

If you ask me how I remember the island, what it was like to be stranded there by misadventure for nearly three months, I would answer that it was a time and landscape of the mind if I did not have the visible signs to summon its materiality: my journal, the cat, the newspaper cuttings, the curiosity of my friends; and my sisters - how they always look at me, I think, as one returned from the dead.

Robinson - Muriel Spark

#23 27/11/2024

Think a new thought, they sometimes tell themselves. The thoughts you have in orbit are so grandiose and old. Think a new one, a completely fresh unthought one. But there are no new thoughts. They're just old thoughts born into new moments - and in these moments is the thought: without that earth we are all finished. We couldn't survive a second without its grace, we are sailors on a ship on a deep, dark unswimable sea.

Orbital - Samantha Harvey

#22 17/11/2024

At a certain point in his career the artist G, perhaps because he could find no other way to make sense of his time and place in history, began to paint upside down. At first sight the paintings looked as though they had been hung the wrong way round by mistake, but then the signature emblazoned in the bottom right-hand corner clearly heralded the advent of a new reality. His wife believed that with this development he had inadvertently expressed something disturbing about the female condition, and wondered if it might have repercussions in terms of his success, but the critical response to the upside-down paintings was more enthusiastic than ever, and G was showered with a fresh round of the awards and honours that people seemed disposed to offer him almost no matter what he did.

The Parade - Rachel Cusk

#21 21/10/2024

Back in the room, he felt totally drained. When poor Mieczyslaw laid his head on the pillow, he felt the world turning. He sat up on the bed and lit the candles that were standing on the bedside table. "Am I going to die?" he asked one of the candles. It did not immediately answer. Its flame flickered as if unsettled by this question. "Only very small or very large things are immortal," it said cautiously. "Atoms are immortal, and galaxies are immortal. That's the whole mystery. The range of death is very specific, like a radio wave."

The Empusium - Olga Takarczuk

#20 7/10/2024

As we jostle for space on this planet, for position and place and name, and agonise about missteps and paths lost, and feel the fragility of our hopes and all that we hold dear, I think of the hare, stepping lightly on the earth, taking cover if the wind blows. We are not so disimilar. If we do not achieve all upon which we have set our hearts, or are beaten back by headwinds stronger than our desires, we too can lay up a while, watch the glitter on the grass, and renew our strength.

Raising Hare - Chloe Dalton

#19 26/09/2024

Today mankind's true experience of itself has no place in economics. Our standard economic theories are based on a fictional character whose foremost characteristic is that he isn't a woman. One would think that economists would devote themselves to finding solutions for the very complex problems that mankind is facing. Instead they stare blindly at their own assumptions about a masculine nature that not even men possess. We govern the world from a place of not knowing who we are.

Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner - Katrine Marçal

#18 22/05/2024

Once scientists knew the diameter of a typical atom, they could estimate the number of atmos in the typical human body. That number? 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. It means that the atoms in a human body are far, far more numerous than the sand grains on all the beaches of the Earth; than [all] the leaves and needles on all the trees of the Earth's forests.

Waves in an Impossible Sea - Matt Strassler

#17 12/05/2024

You can fail to understand all the details about the coffee mug. And you can understand everything there is about the empty set. I'm still happier if you tell me you're going to throw the empty set at my head than if you tell me you're going to throw the coffee mug at my head.

Sean Carroll talking to Robinson Erhardt about mathematical realism

#16 01/05/2024

7) Weak chimneys broken off at roofline. Waves on small ponds, water turbid with mud. Unprovoked assaults on neighbours. Large static charges built up on windows, mirrors, television screens.

The Scale of Intensity - Don Paterson

#15 21/04/2024

A capitalist society is a class-divided society in which power is monopolised by capitalists and their allies. A socialist society is a classless society in which power is shared and decisions are made collectively. A socialist society is, then, a true democracy.

Grace Blakely - Vulture Capitalism

#14 14/04/2024

We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams with tangled growth as "wild". Only to the white man was Nature a "wilderness" and only to him was the land "infested" with "wild" animals and "savage" people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful with the blessings of the Great Mystery.

Chief Standing Bear from The Nutmeg's Curse by Amitav Ghosh

#13 12/03/2024

Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken, Luminously-peopled air ascends; And past the poppies bluish neutral distance Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence; Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.

Philip Larkin - excerpt from Here

#12 06/03/2024

Não existe vácuo politico - there is no such thing as a political vacuum. If you blow a hole in the center of the political system, taking power away from those who have it, then someone else is going to take it. If you want to knock the main players off the stage, you should be paying attention to who is going to take their place. If it is not going to be you, then you had better like the people who are waiting in the wings.

Vinvent Bevins - If We Burn

#11 25/02/2024

What constitutes a problem is not the thing, or the environment where we find the thing, but the conjunction fo the two: something unexpected in a usual place (our favourite aunt in our favourite poker parlour) or something usual in an unexpected place (our favourite poker in our favourite aunt).

Jeanette Winterson - Orange are Not the Only Fruit

#10 18/02/2024

"I think therefore I am."

"For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception."

Descarte & Hume

#9 07/02/2024

Nature does not ask your permission, she has nothing to do with your wishes, and whether you like her laws or dislike them, you are bound to accept her as she is, and consequently all her conclusions.

Fyodor Dostoevsky - Notes from Underground. Quoted by Julian Baggini in How to Think Like a Philosopher

#8 30/01/2024

From time to time, I would gaze up at the stars after a night shift and think that they looked like a glowing desert, and I myself was a poor child abandoned in the desert... I thought that life was truly an accident among accidents in the universe. The universe was an empty palace, and humankind the only ant in the entire palace. This kind of thinking infused the second half of my life with a conflicted mentality: sometimes I thought life was precious, and everything was so important; but other times I thought humans were insignificant, and nothing was worthwhile. Anyway, my life passed day after day accompanied by this strange feeling, and before I knew it, I was old.

Liu Cixin - The Three Body Problem

#7 06/12/2023

As long as the general population is passive, apethetic, and diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.

Noam Chomsky - Who Rules the World

#6 29/11/2023

My favourite kebab shop! The food is fabulous, mouth watering. The staff are very friendly. Me and my wife sit outside and take our time over our kebab meal, which includes chips and a soft drink, great value. Very happy customers 5/5.

Bernard - Google review

#5 18/11/2023

Surely, this will be my last opportunity to speak to you. The air force is now already bombing the antennas... I will pay with my life for my loyalty to the people. And I tell you all that I am certain that the seed we have planted in the conscience in thousands and thousands of Chileans cannot be held back forever... Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers! These are my last words, and I am sure my sacrifice will not be in vain.

Last radio broadcast of Salvador Allende, 11 Sep 1973. Taken from The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins

#4 08/11/2023

Peter reaches into the trunk, pulls out exotic gift number three and drops it on to the snow, at the feet of a very clever penguin named Harold.

"It looks like another vine." Harold says.

Peter looks up at the sky, at the falling snowflakes, then fixes his eyes on Harold.

"Leopard tails do look like vines, Harry."

"Leopard tails do not have leaves." Harold says. "This, Peter, is a vine."

Peter thinks for a moment, then says, "Of course it's a vine. Any fool can see that."

Daren King - Peter the Penguin Pioneer

#3 20/10/2023

Well, I don't care how long I live. Over this I have no control, but I do care about what kind of life I live, and I can control this. I may not live but another five minutes, but it will be five minutes definitely on my terms.

George Jackson - Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

#2 15/10/2023

And most of all beware, even in thought, of assuming the sterile attitude of the spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of grief is not a proscenium, a man who wails is not a dancing bear.

Aimé Césaire

#1 02/10/2023

Your blood asks, how were the wealthy and the law interwoven? With what sulfurious iron fabric? How did the poor keep falling into the tribunals?

How did the land become so bitter for poor children, harshly nourished on stone and grief? So it was, and so I leave it written. Their lives wrote it on my brow.

Pablo Neruda - The Judges