Weeknote 19+20/2024
“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying ”End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH” and the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”
- Terry Pratchett
Read MoreWeeknote 17+18/2024
“If you can approach the world’s complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things...”
- Daniel C Dennett
Read MoreWeeknote 16/2024
“Space travel nowadays was an escape from the problems of Earth. That is, one took off for the stars in the hope that the worst would happen and be done with in one’s absence. And indeed I couldn’t deny that more than once I had peered anxiously out the porthole – especially when returning from a long voyage – to see whether or not our planet resembled a burnt potato.”
- Stanislaw Lem, The Futurological Congress
Read MoreWeeknote 15/2024
“In the Louvre there is a picture, by Guido Reni, of St. Michael with his foot on Satan's neck. The richness of the picture is in large part due to the fiend's figure being there. The richness of its allegorical meaning also is due to his being there—that is, the world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.”
- William James
Read MoreWeeknote 14/2024
“We must keep in mind the story of the statistician who drowned while trying to wade across a river with an average depth of four feet.”
- Neil Postman
Read MoreWeeknote 13/2024
No matter that we may mount on stilts, we still must walk on our own legs. And on the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own buttocks.
- Michel de Montaigne
Read MoreWeeknote 12/2024
Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.
- Douglas Adams
Read MoreWeeknote 11/2024
Work accounts for a poem of genius about as much as plumbing accounts for the fountains of Rome.
- Mark Doty
Read MoreWeeknote 10/2024
In his viva voce examination for "Divvers" [Divinity] at Oxford, Oscar Wilde was required to translate from the Greek version of the New Testament, which was one of the set books. The passage chosen was from the story of the Passion. Wilde began to translate, easily and accurately. The examiners were satisfied, and told him, that this was enough. Wilde ignored them and continued to translate. After another attempt, the examiners at last succeeded in stopping him and told him that they were satisfied with his translation.
"Oh, do let me go on," said Wilde "I want to see how it ends."
Read MoreWeeknote 09/2024
The birds have flown away
A cloud floats idly by.
We never tire of looking at each other,
The mountain and I.
- Li Bai
Read MoreWeeknote 07+08/2024
“Two truths (no lies):
Once you are moderately happy, it’s very hard to get any happier.
Everybody secretly believes they can be the exception to this rule.”
- Adam Mastroianni
Read MoreWeeknote 06/2024
“If you care more than everybody else, you pay better attention, and you see things that others don’t see. To ask the questions that need to be asked, you have to care more than others about what happens, but care less about what others might think of you in the moment.”
- Austin Kleon
Read MoreWeeknote 05/2024
“No input, no output. Meaning, we’re going to hear a band, we’re going to go to a museum, or we’re going to go hang out with some writer that we admire. We’re going to get some input, because if we don’t, then we have nothing. It’s a circle. It’s a respiratory thing.”
- Jim Jarmusch
Read MoreWeeknote 03/2024
“In my view, there are four main energies you can tap into when you write your book. The main writing energy you discover may be just one or you may find that you have a combination of more than one of these energies that fuels your writing endeavors.
The four energies are Blissed, Blessed, Pissed, and Dissed.”
- Brian O’Hanlon
Read MoreWeeknote 02/2024
“To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.”
- Ursula Le Guin
Read MoreWeeknote 01/2024
"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well"
- Julian of Norwich
Read MoreWeeknote 50+51/2023
“All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. If we don't, our lives get made up for us by other people.”
- Ursula Le Guin
Read MoreWeeknote 49/2023
“It’s simple. To be a learner, you’ve got to be willing to be a fool. By fool, to be clear, I don’t mean a stupid, unthinking person, but one with the spirit of the medieval fool, the court jester, the carefree fool in the tarot deck who bears the awesome number zero, signifying the fertile void from which all creation springs, the state of emptiness that allows new things to come into being. Consider for a moment the learnings in life you’ve forfeited because your parents, your peers, your school, your society, have not allowed you to be playful, free, and foolish in the learning process.”
- George Leonard
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