“What, I wondered, is the message buried in the medium of the printed book? Before the words convey their specific meaning, the medium of the book tells us several things. Firstly, life is complex, and if you want to understand it, you have to set aside a fair bit of time to think deeply about it. You need to slow down. Secondly, there is a value in leaving behind your other concerns and narrowing down your attention to one thing, sentence after sentence, page after page. Thirdly, it is worth thinking deeply about how other people live and how their minds work. They have complex inner lives just like you.”
― Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention— and How to Think Deeply Again
― Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention— and How to Think Deeply Again
“I have to start my real life soon, before I die of boredom and frustration.”
― Any Human Heart
― Any Human Heart
“Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you're 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written, or you didn't go swimming in those warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It's going to break your heart. Don't let this happen.”
―
―
“sometimes, what i see is a library in a rural community.
all the tall shelves in the big open room. and the pencils
in a cup at circulation, gnawed on by the entire population.
the books have lived here all along, belonging
for weeks at a time to one or another in the brief sequence
of family names, speaking (at night mostly) to a face,
a pair of eyes. the most remarkable lies.”
― Life on Mars: Poems
all the tall shelves in the big open room. and the pencils
in a cup at circulation, gnawed on by the entire population.
the books have lived here all along, belonging
for weeks at a time to one or another in the brief sequence
of family names, speaking (at night mostly) to a face,
a pair of eyes. the most remarkable lies.”
― Life on Mars: Poems
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