Julie Solms

“Eloquent as this all was, he now tore it up and threw it in the dust-bin. 'Fame,' he said, 'is like... a braided coat, which hampers the limbs; a jacket of silver which curbs the heart; a painted shield which covers a scarecrow,' etc, etc. The pith of his phrases was that while fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful; he alone is at peace...”
― Virginia Woolf

“Indolence has always been my most essential quality. ‘Essential’ in the sense that it is the single quality I am convinced I possess and by which I can be recognised and remembered, and also in the sense that I feel most essentially like myself when I am exercising it. I cannot recollect a time when the idea of going for a walk was not a torment to me; a proposition that endangered my constant wish to stay where I was. I imagine myself, child and adult, curled up in an armchair, reading and being told (as a child) or invited (as an adult) to go out and do something. I cannot think why a person sitting with evident contentment in an armchair causes the desire in others for their immediate activity.”
― Jenny Diski, Why Didn’t You Just Do What You Were Told?

“Writing, for me, is a way of making the airy matter of thought feel real. I can open up a notebook and solidify my feelings, which otherwise seem to float around my head, ill-defined, mutable. It is a necessary act of anchoring. I am not remotely sorry that I attempted to tether myself to the unknown language of my new degree by writing it all down, and I have rarely been sorry since. The only thing that troubles me in general is finding the thoughts I've so carefully stored amid all those reams of paper. I also fear that the ceiling will one day fall through under the weight of all the notebooks stored in the attic.”
― Katherine May, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

“Habit is heaven's gift to us:
a substitute for happiness.”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin