Alan Tai

“Doodling is good for brains—it relieves stress in ways similar to pacing or fidgeting, and it can help with attentiveness. A 2009 study published in Applied Cognitive Psychology found that people given license to doodle recalled more information than non-doodlers, perhaps because doodling requires just enough brainpower to keep the mind from wandering.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed

“At the end of his life, the great picture book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak said on the NPR show Fresh Air, 'I cry a lot because I miss people. I cry a lot because they die, and I can't stop them. They leave me, and I love them more.'

He said, 'I'm finding out as I'm aging that I'm in love with the world.'

It has taken me all my life up to now to fall in love with the world, but I've started to feel it the last couple of years. To fall in love with the world isn't to ignore or overlook suffering, both human and 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, to watch as 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 the 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.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“Until the 1970s, American workers labored in factories making things-cars, homes that they and their neighbors consumed, which created a natural upper limit on prices and profit because they weren't just producers but consumers. The profits from their labor were reinvested into the factories and into them, the workers, to make sure they could keep buying the products they made; after all, they were the biggest share of the market. But in an economy where the biggest share of the money is being made in speculation by a tiny percent of people who own or control most of the investments, the worker gets a vanishingly small slice of the pie.”
― Batya Ungar-Sargon, Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women

“What do fans, artists, and writers mean when they defend an escalating, highly visible, and extensive form of misogyny against black women by claiming that there are bitches and hoes? And how have they gotten away with this level of hateful labeling of black women for so long?”
― Tricia Rose, The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop--and Why It Matters