T J

“The surest way to keep a problem from being solved is to deny that problem exists. Telling people not to complain is a way of keeping social issues from being addressed. It trivializes the grievances of the vulnerable, making the burdened feel like burdens. Telling people not to complain is an act of power, a way of asserting that one's position is more important than another one's pain. People who say "stop complaining" always have the right to stop listening. But those who complain have often been denied the right to speak.”
― Sarah Kendzior, The View From Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior

“Everybody should read fiction… I don’t think serious fiction is written for a few people. I think we live in a stupid culture that won’t educate its people to read these things. It would be a much more interesting place if it would. And it’s not just that mechanics and plumbers don’t read literary fiction, it’s that doctors and lawyers don’t read literary fiction. It has nothing to do with class, it has to do with an anti-intellectual culture that doesn’t trust art.”
― Percival Everett

“SOLEMNLY OVER THE FERTILE LAND Solemnly over the fertile land The brief and futile white cloud passes, And for a black instant the fields are touched By a cold breeze. So too in my soul the slow thought soars And darkens my mind, but I, like the field That returns to itself, return to the day, The surface of life. 31 MAY 1927”
― Fernando Pessoa, Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems

“am not using wonderful as a blank superlative. I mean, actually, they are full of wonder: they wonder about things, they themselves are a wonder, they produce wonders. When you ask such a person a question, you get something back that was already yours, something you had forgotten—or you get something new, something you have never encountered. In a moment it is an old friend. Really we are all like this, can all be like this. It is only our sad grasping protectiveness that makes us monsters.”
― Jesse Ball, Autoportrait