Momo

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions."

In 1984, Huxley added, "people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us".”
― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

“Please don’t look at me like that.
He lowers his gaze, picks up a strand of my hair and twirls it around his finger.
“I miss you,” he says to it.
It’s barely audible over the sound of the storm raging outside, but in here, it’s like a roaring crescendo.
Why do his words have the power to turn my world upside down?
Why do will and shame and guilt and sense fall by the wayside when I’m with him?
Because you love him, comes the answer.
You love him.
You love him.
It echoes like the clap of distant thunder.”
― Leylah Attar, 53 Letters for My Lover

“Whatever weight I’d been, I shouldn’t have been ashamed to declare it; a rock weighs differently than a lion weighs differently than a pile of mangoes and none of it matters.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name: A Memoir

“Let’s go back to Mr. Hernandez’s film literature class, back to Jaws. Mr. Hernandez pointed out that we never actually saw the shark until about eighty minutes into the film. Instead we heard horror stories, glimpsed its sinister fin; primed to be scared, so that when the shark made its grand debut, we saw everything we’d been taught to see, the merciless, blood-seeking Jaws. Before the cop pulled Philando over, he’d reported the man resembled a robbery suspect, commenting on his wide-set nose. By the time the cop stepped up to the window, he didn’t see Philando, he saw everything he thought he knew about wide noses, blackness, guns, added it all up to threat in his head. The problem is not who we are, the problem is what you think we are. The realities you cast on us; that Philando would be violent, that I’d ask for sex behind a dumpster.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name: A Memoir