“Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.”
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“Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide; it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith is, above all, openness - an act of trust in the unknown.”
― The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
― The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
“To remain stable is to refrain from trying to separate yourself from a pain because you know that you cannot. Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape.”
― The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
― The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
“What we have to discover is that there is no safety, that seeking is painful, and that when we imagine that we have found it, we don’t like it.”
― The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
― The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
“Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social enviornment.”
― The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
― The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
Zach’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Zach’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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