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"There are little scorpions too, with delicate pincers and tiny, probing tails. The geckos eat them, snatching them up and crunching through the crisp black shells with their narrow, reptilian jaws." — Apr 15, 2026 10:22AM
"There are little scorpions too, with delicate pincers and tiny, probing tails. The geckos eat them, snatching them up and crunching through the crisp black shells with their narrow, reptilian jaws." — Apr 15, 2026 10:22AM
“I said that the more we can name what we're seeing, the more language we have for it, the less likely we are to destroy it. If you look at the field beside the road and you see merely the generic 'meadow,' you're less likely to care if it's bulldozed for a strip mall than you are if you know that those tall, flat-leaved spires are milkweed, upon which the monarchs have flown two thousand miles to feed, or if you can name sailor's breeches and purslane, lamb's-quarter, or the big umbels of wild carrot feeding the small multitudes. Isn't the world larger and more valuable, if you know what an umbel is?”
― The Art of Description: World into Word
― The Art of Description: World into Word
“During the day, the light flooding in would make the room seem a little sad, despite the roses. It would be an evening room. But in the winter, with the curtains drawn, some spots illuminated--the bookcase corner, the record shelves, the desk, the low table between the two settees, and the vague reflections in the mirror--and large expanses in shadow, whence all things would gleam--the polished wood, the rich, heavy silks, the cut glass, the softened leather--it would be a haven of peace, a land of happiness.”
― Things: A Story of the Sixties / A Man Asleep
― Things: A Story of the Sixties / A Man Asleep
“The way she used to sit by the brook on summer evenings and Sunday afternoons, a book in her lap, so caught up in the story that he could sit down next to her, even stroke her hair softly, without her noticing, a world within the world, a magical island in the shoreless sea of the everyday, a place he can never reach...
[from The Remembered Soldier]”
―
[from The Remembered Soldier]”
―
“In the morning I walk across the fields in a bright, arid light. When I return I can hear the grand piano being played through the open windows. I stand in the garden and listen. The lucidity of the sound seems more real to me than anything we have left behind us, than home, than the days whose repetition had laid a kind of fetter over my soul. In its solitariness it speaks to my own single nature. It startles me a little, to be spoken to; as though my life, the life of home, were a fake, and the real life was roaming somewhere in the world, fleet-footed, unique, uncapturable, to be glimpsed sometimes through an open window, and then to vanish again.”
― The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy
― The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy
“[Is it] Lying when a person uses his considerable reputation and his mastery of public communications to thrash his opponents by redirecting the attention of the general populace, thus infecting the people with the tiniest sliver of doubt, which, widely propagated, becomes a sizable wedge of doubt? said G.
Doesn't every idea, said R., even those judged by some standards to be fallacious or those which have been disproven outright, deserve to be honored with the public's attention?
Doesn't the public have the right to know? said G.
And decide for itself? said R.
Are you calling the public stupid? said G.
Do you not believe in democracy? said R.
R. turned to me.
We were, in life, eminent scientists, he said.”
― Vigil
Doesn't every idea, said R., even those judged by some standards to be fallacious or those which have been disproven outright, deserve to be honored with the public's attention?
Doesn't the public have the right to know? said G.
And decide for itself? said R.
Are you calling the public stupid? said G.
Do you not believe in democracy? said R.
R. turned to me.
We were, in life, eminent scientists, he said.”
― Vigil
Michael’s 2025 Year in Books
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