Brian N

“TRY THIS: DON’T stop beginning. Begin and begin and begin. Begin endlessly—that is, without the taint of even eventual ending. Don’t make the mistake of muddling into middle. Remain pristine and preliminary until the end is inconceivable: until beginning becomes being and being becomes enduring. Eternity isn’t just a demand of the market but also a demand of the heart.”
― Becca Rothfeld, All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess

“Freedom here has nothing to do with political liberty, or a notion of rights, or the license to say whatever he wished, or the ability to go wherever he chose. It's rather the experience of withdrawing inwardly from the press of the wold, in which he himself was so ambitiously engaged. And in sphering himself in a space apart. For Poggio that experience was what it meant to immerse himself in ancient book. "I am free for reading.”
― Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

“I’m told I should smoke more weed, which I don’t like, or else “do something nice for yourself,” which I like so much that I do it every day; the issue is possibly that I do too many nice things for myself and have become a decadent millennial with no values or principles except expertly curated consumption.”
― Lauren Oyler, No Judgment: Essays – Trenchant Cultural Critique on Technology, Celebrity, and Contemporary Life

“When I met my husband I did not know what to say about him. He was too new for my secondhand language. I wanted a fresh mouth, capable of pronouncing unprecedented words, and a body unstained by prior touch. Now I have them. My life has been split open, like a cocoon, and I am still waiting to see just what sort of creature crawls out.”
― Becca Rothfeld, All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess