“It was all spoiled in one day, in a couple of minutes, not by fits and starts, struggles, hopes and losses, in the long-drawn-out way that such things are more often spoiled. And if that’s true that things are usually spoiled, isn’t the quick way the easier way to bear? But you don’t really take […]
“It strikes me that although we occasionally carp about Having To Suffer, and moan about never producing real Art, and become despondent or try too hard to compensate, we are indulging in our usual trick of synthesizing something to worry about, and should really be thanking ourselves that we live the life we do. We […]
“‘What is the Culture? What do we believe in, even if it hardly ever is expressed, even if we are embarrassed about talking about it? Surely in freedom, more than anything else. A relativistic, changing sort of freedom, unbounded by laws or laid-down moral codes, but––in the end––just because it is so hard to pin […]
“‘How long do you think this place is going to stay the way it is now? Ten years? Twenty? Can’t you see how much this place has to alter…in just the next century? We’re so used to things staying much the same, to society and technology––at least immediately available technology––hardly changing over our lifetimes that…I […]
“‘I want to go on being a student,’ I told him. ‘I want to be a teacher. I’m just a reader,’ I said. ‘DON’T SOUND SO ASHAMED,’ he said. ‘READING IS A GIFT.’ ‘I learned it from you,’ I told him. ‘IT DOESN’T MATTER WHERE YOU LEARNED IT––IT’S A GIFT. IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMETHING, […]
As an amateur neuroscience enthusiast, I’m obligated not only to seek out the best and most recent neuroscientific findings, but also to be wary of how these findings might be abused. Any scientific discipline that can be easily monetized and/or misinterpreted by the popular media will spawn its share of hacks, prophets, and snake oil […]
“Newspapers are a bad habit, the reading equivalent of junk food. What happens to me is that I seize upon an issue in the news––the issue is the moral/philosophical, political/intellectual equivalent of a cheeseburger with everything on it; but for the duration of my interest in it, all my other interests are consumed by it, […]
“‘I can’t read Tess of the d’Urbervilles!’ I cried. ‘It’s too hard!’ ‘YOU MEAN IT’S HARD TO MAKE YOURSELF READ IT, YOU MEAN IT’S HARD HARD TO MAKE YOURSELF PAY ATTENTION,’ he said. ‘BUT IT’S NOT TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES THAT’S HARD. THOMAS HARDY MAY BORE YOU BUT HE’S VERY EASY TO UNDERSTAND––HE’S OBVIOUS, HE […]
“Grandmother was rigorous and unswerving. It was her belief in the value of effort itself that prevented her from buying a television set. She was a passionate reader, and she thought that reading was one of the noblest efforts of all; in contrast, she found writing to be a great waste of time––a childish self-indulgence, […]
“‘Every American should be forced to live outside the United States for a year or two. Americans should be forced to see how ridiculous they appear to the rest of the world! They should listen to someone else’s version of themselves––to anyone else’s version! Every country knows more about America than Americans know about themselves! […]