Link = source I've actually read/endorse. No link = random, out-of-context snippet I stumbled on, usually online. (Some of these are advice—others I just enjoy the language or sentiment.)
Every problem cries in its own language. Go like a bloodhound where the truth has trampled. –Tomas Tranströmer
From “100 Things I Know”: When emailing someone to ask for a favor, start by asking the favor first, THEN move on to small talk. I always rush through the “Hope you’re well!” paragraph to get to the Big Ask. It reads as much more genuine when it follows after the request. –Mari Andrew
Never be so sure of what you want that you wouldn’t take something better. –Chris Voss
From A Month in Siena: If I stop and think of the people closest to me, of where they might be at this exact moment, what they might be up to, how they might be feeling, what might be preoccupying their thoughts, the weight of their concerns, I become incapable of doing anything else. It is a truly debilitating state. It fills me with immeasurable anxiety, sorrow and longing. I have never understood why the basic fact of the lives of those with whom I am intimate running concurrently and separately from mine must fill me with such darkness. –Hisham Matar
From “My Heart of Hearts”: One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. But if you’re interested in having the dignity of a rational animal (a perfectly acceptable hobby! no worse than trying to get good at Fortnite or whatever!) then eventually you notice that a million is made out of a million ones and try to act accordingly. –Scott Alexander Siskind
The day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. –Anaïs Nin
It’s not a small world after all. It’s just poorly mixed. –unknown
Every day, you used to sit alone at your desk. The black hole eternally closing in. When you couldn’t take it anymore, you would go to a raucous bar to meet some people you didn’t really care to talk to. Essentially, you used to play two forms of emptiness—the funhouse and the void—against each other.
Now that you don’t live alone, and are responsible for many people besides yourself, you rarely confront the void. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. You just have the luxury—or the terrible obligation—of ignoring it. –Liana Finck
Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you. –Paul Coelho
From “27 Notes on Growing Old(er)”: “To get born, your body makes a pact with death, and from that moment, all it tries to do is cheat.” Louise Glück. I am not certain what she meant but this reads optimistically to me. All our biological processes—healing wounds, fighting infection, repairing cellular damage, maintaining homeostasis—are essentially the body attempting to beat the system. I sometimes hear people criticise fitness fanatics by saying they’re trying to deny mortality. Well, no shit—that’s the whole game. We’re cheating entropy from the moment we’re born. Every organism, including the one which is you, is a revolt—an organised rebellion—against the universe’s fundamental drive towards disorder. When you’re up against an enemy this implacable, I say it’s OK to cheat. In fact it’s heroic. The universe wants us to be dust and will eventually get the job done. Staying vital for as long as we can is a magnificently perverse act of resistance. –Ian Leslie
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