When a student gets it, when it first breaks across his face, it’s so fucking beautiful, he told me. I nodded, moved, though I’d never taught anyone a single thing. What do you teach, I asked him. Rollerblading, he explained.
“Maybe they understood, in fact, that beauty and meaning had nothing to do with one another.”
― My Year of Rest and Relaxation
― My Year of Rest and Relaxation
“I looked over at my neighbor, the song sparrow, and thought about how just a few years ago, I wouldn’t have known its name, might not have even known it was a sparrow, might not have even seen it at all. How lonely that world seemed in comparison to this one! But the sparrow and I were no longer strangers. It was no stretch of the imagination, nor even of science, to think that we were related. We were both from the same place (Earth), made of the same stuff. And most important, we were both alive.”
― How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
― How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
“The notion of my future suddenly snapped into focus: it didn't exist yet. I was making it, standing there, breathing, fixing the air around my body with stillness, trying to capture something—a thought, I guess—as though such a thing were possible, as though I believed in the delusion described in those paintings—that time could be contained, held captive.”
― My Year of Rest and Relaxation
― My Year of Rest and Relaxation
“I want to be happy," says dad. "I want to be interested and challenged by whatever verb I elect to noun in any given moment of my life. If I am healthy, my family's healthy, and I am of sound enough mind to sustain curiosity around my work, then I'm blessed.”
― Permanent Record
― Permanent Record
“I touched the frame of the painting. And then I placed my whole palm on the dry, rumbling surface of the canvas, simply to prove to myself that there was no god stalking my soul. Time was not immemorial. Things were just things.”
― My Year of Rest and Relaxation
― My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Nikhil’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Nikhil’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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