Stefano Falini

“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.”
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

“She said we all not only could know everything. We do. We just tell ourselves we don't to make it all bearable.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives

“Tra le vittime dell'ignoranza ci sono anche gli ignoranti.”
― Luca Sofri

“Quando il sistema della «normalità» percepisce il tuo coming out, molto spesso ormai lo accetta o addirittura lo celebra. Ma da quel momento comincia a ridisegnare su di te una figura che corrisponda alla «sua» idea di omosessuale. Quale? Quella ancillare, subalterna, di servizio a chi incarna la figura del potere, del comando, del leader. Dal momento in cui dichiari di essere gay scatta un automatico incasellamento in un ruolo prestabilito dal mondo esterno, che decide come sarai: estroso, creativo, spiritoso, sensibile, di buon gusto, e fedelissimo spettegolatore su tutto ciò che accade intorno. Quello che nelle corti si definiva «cicisbeo».”
― Diego Passoni