Rosalind Williams > Quotes

“To live with constant loss and change is to live with a constant sense of foreboding. This in turn makes the world, no matter how crowded it may be, a haunted place. Buildings and landscapes that are well remembered suddenly disappear. They are preemptively mourned when their disappearance is expected. Nothing can be enjoyed for long when its disappearance may be imminent. This mismatch between consciousness and surroundings can make a person feel like a ghost, even in the midst of life. When the world is both crowded and haunted, when human presence in the world is both so imposing and so transient, memories and feelings that feel ‘real’ may be detached from the visible world, and a lost world may seem more present than the visible one. The self becomes a stranger in a strange land, an alien, a visitor from another planet.”
― Rosalind Williams, The Triumph of Human Empire: Verne, Morris, and Stevenson at the End of the World

“The more humans have mastered the world, the more it has taken on the taint of our own mortality. The world no longer seems deathless.”
― Rosalind Williams, The Triumph of Human Empire: Verne, Morris, and Stevenson at the End of the World