nia

“Maybe we're just born to love and worry about the people we know, and to go on loving and worrying even when there are more important things we should be doing. And if that means the human species is going to die out, isn't it in a way a nice reason to die out, the nicest reason you can imagine? Because when we should have been reorganising the distribution of the world's resources and transitioning collectively to a sustainable economic model, we were worrying about sex and friendship instead. Because we loved each other too much and found each other too interesting. And I love that about humanity, and in fact it's the very reason I root for us to survive - because we are so stupid about each other.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“inside I am aflame with gratitude that I have only myself to carry around, however heavy all these me’s might currently be.”
― Glynnis MacNicol, I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman's Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris

“Europeans eventually took to coffee with a passion. Pope Clement VIII, who died in 1605, supposedly tasted the Muslim drink at the behest of his priests, who wanted him to ban it. “Why, this Satan’s drink is so delicious,” he reputedly exclaimed, “that it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it. We shall fool Satan by baptizing it and making it a truly Christian beverage.”
― Mark Pendergrast, Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World

“Of course if we all stay alone and practise celibacy and carefully police our personal boundaries, many problems will be avoided, but it seems we will also have almost nothing left that makes life wortwhile. I guess you could say the old ways of being together were wrong--they were!--and that we didn't want to repeat old mistakes--we didn't. But when we tore down what confined us, what did we have in mind to replace it?...What do we have now? Instead? Nothing. And we hate people for making mistakes so much more than we love them for doing good that the easiest way to live is to do nothing, say nothing, and love no one.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You