“On my first day of training, she told me, "Death is natural. Children dying is natural. None of us actually wants to live in a natural world." Treating disease, whether through herbs or magic or drugs, is unnatural. No other animals do it, at least not with anything approaching our sophistication. Hospitals are unnatural. As are novels, and saxophones. None of us actually wants to live in a natural world.”
― Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
― Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
“It's no wonder we worry about the end of the world. Worlds end all the time.”
― The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
― The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
“To fall in love with the world isn’t to ignore or overlook suffering, both human or otherwise. For me anyway, to fall in love with the world is to look up at the night sky and feel your mind swim before the beauty and the distance of the stars. It is to hold your children while they cry and watch the sycamore trees leaf out in June. When my breastbone starts to hurt, and my throat tightens and tears well in my eyes, I want to look away from feeling. I want to deflect with irony or anything else that will keep me from feeling directly. We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here.”
― The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
― The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
“Do you know the difference between an error and a mistake, Ensign?" 'No, sir.' "Anyone can make an error, Ensign. But that error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.”
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“We can talk and talk and talk about what the pain is like, but we can never manage to convey what it is.”
― The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
― The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
Ethan’s 2025 Year in Books
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