benny luno

“We talked about nothing in particular, but it felt like we were talking about the most important things...”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“People like you to be something, preferably what they are.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“In an ancient Confucian classical text, Wei found the perfect motto for the Qing’s nineteenth-century predicament—indeed, for modern China’s struggle as a whole—which he used prominently in the preface to Records of Conquest: “Humiliation stimulates effort; when the country is humiliated, its spirit will be aroused.”40 This idea would be expressed again and again by others for the next century and a half. In fact, it remains the inspiration for the phrase inscribed today in the museum at the Temple of the Tranquil Seas: “To feel shame is to approach courage.”
― Orville Schell, Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century

“I read the first chapter of A Brief History of Time when Dad was still alive, and I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn't even matter if I existed at all.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close