“Design is all about desire, but strangely this desire seems almost subject-less today, or at least lack-less; that is, design seems to advance a new kind of narcissism, one that is all image and no interiority - an apotheosis of the subject that is also its disappearance. Poor little rich man: he is 'precluded from all fuure living and striving, developing and desiring' in the neo-Art Nouveau world of total design and Internet plenitude. ”
― Design and Crime
― Design and Crime
“For Seabrook this 'nobrow' state - where the old brow distinctions no longer seem to apply - is not only a dumbing down of intellectual culture; it is also a wising up to commercial culture, which is no longer seen as an object of disdain but as 'a source of status.' At the same time this child of the elite is ambivalent about the collapse of brow distinctions, caught as he is between the old world of middlebrow taste, as vetted by The New Yorker of yore, and the new world of nobrow taste, where culture and marketing are one. ”
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“The Church, whose mission is eternity, is keenly sensitive to time and therefore to women. For time is in women's genes. They stand at the intersection of cyclic and linear time. Reconciling the irreconcilable takes work: wait until the time is ripe, wait some more while time does its work, then make haste because time is running out. ”
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“Aïe, aïe, aïe, je me suis dit, est-ce que ça veut dire que c'est comme ça qu'il faut mener sa vie ? Toujours en équilibre entre la beauté et la mort, le mouvement et sa disparition ?
C'est peut-être ça, être vivant : traquer des instants qui meurent.”
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C'est peut-être ça, être vivant : traquer des instants qui meurent.”
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“... c'est peut-être ça la vie : beaucoup de désespoir mais aussi quelques moments de beauté où le temps n'est plus le même. C'est comme si les notes de musique faisaient un genre de parenthèses dans le temps, de supension, un ailleurs ici même, un toujours dans le jamais.
Oui, c'est ça, un toujours dans le jamais.”
― L'Élégance du hérisson
Oui, c'est ça, un toujours dans le jamais.”
― L'Élégance du hérisson
Annabel’s 2025 Year in Books
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