“We order our lives with barely held stories…”
Michael Ondaatje, Warlight
Category: Quotes
we are not doomed yet
juggle the numbers
some are doomed
but not the 3 of us
or not the 3 of us
just yet
or maybe 1 of us,
the smallest,
the 1 of us
still learning
numbers,
who doesn’t know
what 2 of us
are keeping to ourselves
~from Alphabet, by Ailbhe Darcy (2018)
“In truth, Luddism and science fiction concern themselves with the same questions: not merely what the technology does, but who it does it for and who it does it to.”
Cory Doctorow, Science Fiction is a Luddite Literature
No matter what I’m writing, it’s never a waste of time.
I’m always working through something. I’m always trying to arrive at a new location.
Even I can’t see it right away, it’s happening beneath the surface.
~Jami Attenberg
Your dress waving in the wind.
This
is the only flag I love.
~Pattern by Garous Abdolmalekian; translated by Idra Novey and Ahmad Nadalizadeh (2020)
“I hoped that she was not yet dreaming of death, but of gardeners wrapping strands of their own hair around dirt clotted roots, and fascist sheep, and a life carved from a single block of wood, and a man trying to wash the shame from his feet.”
Laura van den Berg, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears
“A cellphone is a little like a watch.
If you need it, someone else has got it.”
Christopher Walken, Guardian Interview
…the world is an experiment in inventing validity, and conviction is its only proof.
~Bewilderment by Richard Powers
“Knowing the outcome infects us. We’re rational beings that think things are supposed to make sense.It’s very hard for us to wrap our heads around a bad outcome when we didn’t do anything wrong.
Or that there’s a good outcome that’s just random.
We’re really uncomfortable with randomness in that way. It’s just the way we’re built: to recognize patterns.”
Annie Duke on resulting fallacy
“Most letters from a parent contain a parent’s own lost dreams disguised as good advice.”
Kurt Vonnegut, in a letter to his daughter, Nanette, 20th September 1972