#lan

Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#disappointment #emotions #english #excitement #fail

My heart is quite calm now. I will go back. ↗

— James Joyce

#ireland #james-joyce #artists

Constrained optimization is the art of compromise between conflicting objectives. This is what design is all about. To find fault with biological design - as Stephen Jay Gould regularly does - because it misses some idealized optimum is therefore gratuitous. Not knowing the objectives of the designer, Gould is in no position to say whether the designer has proposed a faulty compromise among those objectives. ↗

— William A. Dembski

#biology #id #intelligent-design #optimisation #optimization

Invisible prose only!" rules out the sparkling style of [writers]. . . For [whom] vivid prose, and the visionary mind it evinces, rich with speculation, insight, and subjectivity, is the craft and offers a unique caliber of truth. Is there any other art form one would praise by saying it's "invisible"? By definition, art transcends the ordinary, calls attention to itself, and offers virtuosity as its calling card. One that makes it possible to do what metaphor does so well: illuminate what can't be wholly understood. ↗

— Diane Ackerman

#language #metaphor #writing #art

Fred is staying with his mother these holidays. She's living in London for six months, in Chelsea, studying Georgian underwear at the National Art Library. It's a thesis, not a fetish. ↗

— Fiona Wood

#underwear #art

Tell me, if I take you to my room and put you in my bed, what do you think would happen?" "I can draw you a diagram. Hint: I'm slot B, and you're tab A. ↗

— Kresley Cole

#berserker #declan-chase #dreams-of-a-dark-warrior #immortals-after-dark #kresley-cole

Declan and Regin: "Kiss you?" As he waited for the revulsion to seize him, he found himself wondering how she would react. Would she moan into his mouth? "It will help you remember me. Kiss me. Come on, you know you want to so bad. You want me so bad." "Never." Bloody get off her, get away from her. But he needed to be above her like this, to master her, overpower her. "Never? That boner of yours just called you a lair. ↗

— Kresley Cole

#declan-chase #dreams-of-a-dark-warrior #immortals-after-dark #kresley-cole #lore

The past is always tense, the future perfect. ↗

— Zadie Smith

#grammar #language #past #past

I was not sure where I was going, and I could not see what I would do when I got [there]. But you saw further and clearer than I, and you opened the seas before my ship, whose track led me across the waters to a place I had never dreamed of, and which you were even then preparing to be my rescue and my shelter and my home. ↗

— Thomas Merton

#god #guidance #life-plan #dreams

I'm told the effect is cumulative--it will continue to worsen." Though outwardly calm as he explained this, his face had paled even more. "But if you tell me about the Valkyrie's weaknesses, I'll administer the antidote." "Weaknesses? So many. Foremost, we're ... ticklish. ↗

— Kresley Cole

#berserker #declan-chase #dreams-of-a-dark-warrior #immortals-after-dark #kresley-cole