Drew

“I remember when I was a child at Coolin or Sagle or Talache, walking into the woods by myself and feeling the solitude around me build like electricity and pass through my body with a jolt that made my hair prickle. I remember kneeling by a creek that spilled and pooled among rocks and fallen trees with the unspeakably tender growth of small trees already sprouting from their backs, and thinking, there is only one thing wrong here, which is my own presence, and that is the slightest imaginable intrusion—feeling that my solitude, my loneliness, made me almost acceptable in so sacred a place.”
― Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books: Essays

“The word on the jar was RELISH. And he was glad he had decided to live. RELISH! What a special name for the minced pickle sweetly crushed in its white-capped jar. The man who had named it, what a man he must have been. Roaring, stamping around, he must have tromped the joys of the world and jammed them in this jar and writ in a big hand, shouting, RELISH! For its very sound meant rolling in sweet fields with roistering chestnut mares, mouths bearded with grass, plunging your head fathoms deep in trough water so the sea poured cavernously through your head. RELISH!”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“Take quantum mechanics, the crown jewel of our species, the most accurate, far-ranging and beautiful of all our physical theories. It lies behind the supremacy of our smartphones, behind the Internet, behind the coming promise of godlike computing power. It has completely reshaped our world. We know how to use it, it works as if by some strange miracle, and yet there is not a human soul, alive or dead, who actually gets it. The mind cannot come to grips with its paradoxes and contradictions. It’s as if the theory had fallen to earth from another planet, and we simply scamper around it like apes, toying and playing with it, but with no true understanding”
― Benjamín Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the World

“You know the difference between humans and fish, Howard?’ ‘They have gills?’ ‘That’s one difference. But there’s another difference, a more important difference. See if you can spot it. Come on, take a look.’ Obediently Howard rises from his chair and studies the variously sized fish in their heated limbo. He can hear the Automator breathing behind him. The fish flap their fins, placid and inscrutable. ‘I can’t see it, Greg,’ he says eventually. ‘Of course you can’t. Teamwork, Howard. That’s what the difference is. Fish aren’t team players. Look at them. There’s no system at work there. They’re not even talking to each other. How are they going to get anything done, you may ask? Answer: they’re not. What you see right there is fish at the height of their game. I’ve been watching them for a month now and that’s pretty much as far as it goes.”
― Paul Murray, Skippy Dies