Michele T

“Humans get bored in moments without stimulation or with stimulation without enough variety, stimulation that doesn’t please them. The absence of stimulation, even for a few moments, can send their brains into a panic and cause them to generate stimulation where there is none. This is, I imagine, why they fear death so much as they do. An eternity of nothing is an unceasing nightmare for such novelty-seeking creatures.”
― John Scalzi, Slow Time Between the Stars

“Living life as an artist is a practice.
You are either engaging in the practice
or you’re not.

It makes no sense to say you’re not good at it.
It’s like saying, “I’m not good at being a monk.”
You are either living as a monk or you’re not.

We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output.

The real work of the artist
is a way of being in the world.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“Self-esteem” doesn’t exist in the Chinese lexicon, at least not in the way Americans use it. In China, a child’s regard for herself is rarely as important as a stark evaluation of performance. Almost as if childhood were an Olympic sport, the Chinese rank children on everything from work ethic to Chinese character recognition and musical skill.”
― Lenora Chu, Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve

“There was a word for this in Norwegian: gift, which could mean either “marriage” or “poison,” and that probably seemed about right to Henry.”
― Nathan Hill, The Nix