December 2011
6 posts
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“[I]t’s only by having some distance from the world that you can see it whole, and understand what you should be doing with it.”
— Pico Iyer, The Joy of Quiet, The New York Times
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“Exile is never the state of being satisfied, placid, or secure. Exile, in the words of Wallace Stevens, is ‘a mind of winter’ in which the pathos of summer and autumn as much as the potential of spring are nearby but unobtainable. Perhaps this is another way of saying that a life of exile moves according to a different calendar, and is less seasonal and settled than life at...
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“[Writing matters b]ecause of the spirit, I say. Because of the heart. Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing...
yes, yes, happy christmas, and all that jazz. sigh.
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“Now I know what loneliness is, I think. Momentary loneliness, anyway. It comes from a vague core of the self—like a disease of the blood, dispersed throughout the body so that one cannot locate the matrix, the spot of contagion… . This loneliness will blur and diminish, no doubt, when tomorrow I plunge again into classes, into the necessity of studying for exams. But now, that false...