Matthew > Recent Status Updates

“You keep having the hope that this is a prologue but no one knows how far they are into their own story. Some of us are hoping it’s the end.” (94)

How little I have died!

Got a great one for my Geburtstag; I didn’t want to look ahead

“nothing’s getting better, and we know it.”

There should always be an astronaut subplot in any terrestrial plague story.

I can’t believe how awful the first two stories are. I’m also worried that if they put them first it’s only going to get worse somehow…

“Big mistake, to conflate sincerity with truth.” (74)

“When a friend's mother asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I'd answered honestly that I wanted to be a weather girl: to look beautiful and talk about wind and planets, to be the least necessary member of the news team and be loved for it. I was heartbroken to learn of the rigors of meteorology.” (18)

“Ever spend time aboard a space ship amidst the marvels of technological sterility and the interminable presence of super novas, colliding galaxies and black holes? After a decade or so the effect of such astounding phenomena wears thin. You surprise yourself that you are fondly recalling scenes of urban squalor or the rustic shack in the piney woods.” (130)

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point, however, is to change it

“The issue opens with ‘On White Radicalism,’ a statement by the Black Action Movement in Kalamazoo. […] The author of the statement argues that, in the American context, Marxist analysis is not sufficient because of the ‘almost insurmountable obstacle’ of the racism of white workers.” (42)

“So, then, the antidote to meaninglessness was art. I could be the agent of my own meaning; the answers would come from my perception and understanding of the world and those around me. No systems of belief or patterns of faith would need to open my path into each new year of my life. It was the most sacred thing I’d ever learned.” (59)

“America is, in particular, such a desperate onlooker of death. […] We have been conditioned that any price is worthy to avoid being even death-adjacent. We could never do right by someone who needed it the most.” (7)