Michael

“The Claude glass was also known as the ‘black mirror’ and was responsible for a number of minor mishaps. This is where history catches up with us. Our version of the black mirror, carried in the pocket, used by millions to ‘see’ rock concerts, fireworks displays and sunsets, is the smartphone. We look through it to make sure we are catching grainy footage of the wondrous thing we are missing.”
― Vybarr Cregan-Reid, Footnotes: How Running Makes Us Human

“Paris … is loath to surrender itself to people who are in a hurry; it belongs to the dreamers.…”
― Julian Green, Paris

“Maybe niceness is the wrong metric, I said. Of course it's really about power, Bobbi agreed. But it's harder to work out who has the power, so instead we rely on 'niceness' as a kind of stand-in. I mean this is an issue in public discourse. We end up asking like, is Israel 'nicer' than Palestine.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“What really lies beneath our feet at each moment is not a usefulness, but an inaccessible netherworld that we can use because it is there. It is the Empire of the Capital X.”
― Graham Harman, Towards Speculative Realism: Essays and Lectures