John

“Being alone is easier than having a family. When you have a family, you are responsible to each other. It’s easier to navigate the world without that burden.”
― Zachary Jernigan, Shower of Stones

“For me, Shambhala, you see, turned out to be not a goal but an absence. Not the discovery of a place but the act of leaving the futureless place where I was. And in the process I arrived at Constantinople.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day

“The past above, the future below
and the present pouring down: the roar,
the roar of the present, a speech--
is, of necessity, my sole concern.”
― William Carlos Williams, Paterson

“The single most important human insight to be gained from this way of comparing societies is perhaps the realization that everything could have been different in our own society – that the way we live is only one among innumerable ways of life which humans have adopted. If we glance sideways and backwards, we will quickly discover that modern society, with its many possibilities and seducing offers, its dizzying complexity and its impressive technological advances, is a way of life which has not been tried out for long. Perhaps, psychologically speaking, we have just left the cave: in terms of the history of our species, we have but spent a moment in modern societies. (..) Anthropology may not provide the answer to the question of the meaning of life, but at least it can tell us that there are many ways in which to make a life meaningful.”
― Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology