#lis

You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission. ↗

— Flannery O'Connor

#delusion #extremism #fanaticism #fanatics #guerrilla-decontextualism

The current ruling ontology denies any possibility of a social causation of mental illness. The chemico-biologization of mental illness is of course strictly commensurate with its depoliticization. Considering mental illness an individual chemico-biological problem has enormous benefits for capitalism. First, it reinforces Capital’s drive towards atomistic individualization (you are sick because of your brain chemistry). Second, it provides an enormously lucrative market in which multinational pharmaceutical companies can peddle their pharmaceuticals (we can cure you with our SSRls). It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; and the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism. ↗

— Mark Fisher

#capitalist-realism #individualism #mental-health #mental-illness #mental-health

The thing I want to write most is the next thing I write. ↗

— Carroll Bryant

#philisohpical #philosphy #writers #writers-block #writers-on-writing

If you think of something, do it. Plenty of people often think, “I’d like to do this, or that. ↗

— Lydia Davis

#depression #idleness #self-sabotage #terror #writer-s-block

We want the Israelis to leave. They want to leave - so let us let them leave. ↗

— Mahmoud Abbas

#leave #let us #them #us #want

Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can have a dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment. ↗

— Lynn Abbey

#balance #because #commitment #different #dull

Blowing up buses will not induce the Israelis to move forward, and neither will the killing of Palestinians or the demolition of their homes and their future. All this needs to stop. And we pledge that Jordan will do its utmost to help achieve it. ↗

— King Abdullah II

#blowing #buses #forward #future #help

Our response has been, 'Well, let's then make an effort to get the Israelis and the Palestinians to sit around the table.' That hasn't happened. So we only have ourselves to blame for this crisis. ↗

— King Abdullah II

#been #blame #crisis #effort #get

Traditional matter must be glorified, since it would be easier to listen to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected things; the listeners, we must remember, needed poetry chiefly as the re-creation of tired hours. ↗

— Lascelles Abercrombie

#easier #familiar #glorified #hours #listen

Suddenly I was the man who got the part that every actor in the English language was trying to get. I was really scared. I had talked the talk, and now I had to walk the walk. For three days, I couldn't answer the phone. ↗

— F. Murray Abraham

#answer #days #english #english language #every