John David

“Life, authentic life, is supposed to be all struggle, unflagging action and affirmation, but when I look back I see that the greater part of my energies was always given over to the simple search for shelter, for comfort, for, yes, I admit it, for cosiness. This is a surprising, not to say a shocking, realization. Before, I saw myself as something of a buccaneer, facing all-comers with a cutlass in my teeth, but now I am compelled to acknowledge that this was a delusion. To be concealed, protected, guarded, that is all I have truly wanted, to burrow down into a place of womby warmth and cower there, hidden from the sky’s indifferent gaze and the harsh air’s damagings. That is why the past is just such a retreat for me, I go there eagerly, rubbing my hands and shaking off the cold present and the colder future. And yet, what existence, really, does it have, the past? After all, it is only what the present was, once, the present that is gone, no more than that. And yet.”
― John Banville, The Sea

“You remember how Mom had that embroidered pillow? When she got upset, she’d shout into it and no one would hear her. That’s Facebook.”
― Anthony Marra, The Tsar of Love and Techno

“What is so incredible and essential about an authentic cultural scene is it rejects a value system based on consumption and productivity and instead celebrates creation, critical thought, aesthetics and expression. That can’t be mass marketed.”
― Claire Vaye Watkins

“My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments with fiddle-strings & harps, drums & tambourines, I sound & clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.”
― Fernando Pessoa