#mode

Joshua Joseph has no real hatred of modern technology - he just mistrusts the effortless, textureless surfaces, and the ease with which it trains you to do things in the way most convenient to the machine. Above all, he mistrusts duplication. A rare thing becomes a commonplace thing. A skill becomes a feature. The end is more important than the means. The child of the soul gives place to a product of the system....For anything really important, Joe prefers something with a history, an item which can name the hand which assembled it and will warm to the one that deploys it. A thing of life, rather than one of the many consumer items which humans use to make more clutter; strange parasitic devices with their own little ecosystems. ↗

— Nick Harkaway

#machines #moderism #technology #life

it was weird. Would you believe it if some supermodel called you up and told you she was your sister?’ Strike thought of his own bizarre family history. ‘Probably,’ he said. ↗

— Robert Galbraith

#family #history #siblings #supermodel #family

Hell hath no fury like a coolly received postmodernist. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#postmodernism #humor

Reality is shaped by the forces that destroy it. ↗

— D. Harlan Wilson

#fantasy #horror #humor #literary #postmodern

As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth. ↗

— Edward Abbey

#cures #depression #depression-humor #modern-life #humor

The 'Enlightenment', which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines. ↗

— Michel Foucault

#enlightenment

Postmodernity is said to be a culture of fragmentary sensations, eclectic nostalgia, disposable simulacra, and promiscuous superficiality, in which the traditionally valued qualities of depth, coherence, meaning, originality, and authenticity are evacuated or dissolved amid the random swirl of empty signals. ↗

— Jean Baudrillard

#postmodernity #nostalgia

Then he kissed her. Betsy didn't believe in letting boys kiss you. She thought it was silly to be letting first this boy and then that one kiss you, when it didn't mean a thing. But it was wonderful when Joe Willard kissed her. And it did mean a thing. ↗

— Maud Hart Lovelace

#modesty #young-love #love

Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like jogging empty-handed after jogging with hand weights. What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative! Madeleine felt safe with a nineteenth century novel. There were going to be people in it. Something was going to happen to them in a place resembling the world. Then too there were lots of weddings in Wharton and Austen. There were all kinds of irresistible gloomy men. ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#literary-criticism #literary-theory #narrative #nineteenth-century #novels

You might want to put some clothes on' suggested Jace 'I'm all for the bra and panties look, but you don't want the Silent Brothers to die of excitement ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#jace-wayland #modesty #humor