aden

“Jump in the urinal and stand on your head
I'm the one that's alive. You're all dead.

Lean over the bowl and then take a dive
All of you are dead. I am alive.”
― Philip K. Dick, Ubik

“I want to know more about what dogs are feeling, and how those feelings compare with mine. I want to know because I was trained as a scientist and am driven by the druglike excitement of discovery. I want to know because I think it's important for our species to understand where we fit in with the rest of life. In addition, so much suffering - in both species - could be prevented if we had a better understanding of the emotional lives of our dogs. My dogs are as important to me as my human friends. They are my buddies, my family, my co-workers, my therapists, and, like all good friends, occasionally thorns in my side. I want to know more about who they are, and what they are feeling - partly from a desire to give them the best life I can, and partly from a desire to deepen our friendship”
― Patricia B. McConnell, For the Love of a Dog: Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend

“Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty. No, I do not wish you success. I don't even want to talk about it. I want to talk about failure.
Because you are human beings, you are going to meet failure. You are going to meet disappointment, injustice, betrayal, and irreparable loss. You will find you're weak where you thought yourself strong. You'll work for possessions and then find they possess you. You will find yourself - as I know you already have - in dark places, alone, and afraid.
What I hope for you, for all my sisters and daughters, brothers and sons, is that you will be able to live there, in the dark place. To live in the place that our rationalizing culture of success denies, calling it a place of exile, uninhabitable, foreign.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places

“When you recall something - this conversation, perhaps, a hundred years from now - there will be things about it that you misremember. Yet those misremembered details will themselves become part of your memory, gaining solidity and texture with each instance of recall. A thousand years from now, your memory of this conversation might bear little resemblance to reality. Yet you’d swear your recollection was accurate.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Zima Blue and Other Stories