Puck

“Our lives here are inexpressibly trivial and momentous at once, it seems he’s about to wake up and say. Both repetitive and unprecedented. We matter greatly and not at all. To reach some pinnacle of human achievement only to discover that your achievements are next to nothing and that to understand this is the greatest achievement of any life, which itself is nothing, and also much more than everything. Some metal separates us from the void; death is so close. Life is everywhere, everywhere.”
― Samantha Harvey, Orbital

“For most black people in Europe, the battle against prejudice is for life, which is why you have to pace yourself to run a marathon instead of exerting all your energy in a spring if you want to survive — you can’t be throwing beer bottles at police and telling them to fuck themselves simply for the fun of it.”
― Johny Pitts, Afropean: Notes from Black Europe

“Danger, when it is always imminent, does harm. It doesn’t need to actually arrive. You exhaust yourself in the act of forever looking over your shoulder. Your body readies itself to fight and never quite discharges that chemical cocktail. You channel it instead into anger and self-pity and anxiety and hopelessness. You divert it into work. But really what you do, with every fibre of your being, is watch. You are incessantly, exhaustingly alert. You don’t dare ever let up, just in case the danger takes advantage of your inattention. I’ve forgotten what it feels like to have space in my brain for anything other than watching.”
― Katherine May, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

“Doing what you like doesn’t guarantee happiness. Unless you’re also in an excellent environment, then maybe. Sometimes, it’s the environment that’s more important. If you’re in an ill-suited environment, what you enjoy can become something you want to give up. What I’m saying is, not everyone fits into the mould of finding happiness just by discovering what they like. That’s too simplified, not to mention naive.”
― Hwang Bo-reum, Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop