#ty

One of those out-of-the-ordinary days that made sense of the slew of ordinary days. New York had a way of doing that. Every now and then the city shook its soul out. It assailed you with an image, or a day, or a crime, or a terror, or a beauty so difficult to wrap your mind around that you had to shake your head in disbelief. He had a theory about it. It happened, and re-happened, because it was a city uninterested in history. Strange things occurred precisely because there was no necessary regard for the past. The city lived in a sort of everyday present. It had no need to believe in itself as a London, or an Athens, or even a signifier of the New World, like a Sydney, or a Los Angeles. No, the city couldn’t care less about where it stood. He had seen a T-shirt once that said: NEW YORK FUCKIN’ CITY. As if it were the only place that ever existed and the only one that ever would. New York kept going forward precisely because it didn’t give a good goddamn about what it had left behind. It was like the city that Lot left, and it would dissolve if it ever began looking backward over its own shoulder. Two pillars of salt. Long Island and New Jersey. ↗

— Colum McCann

#beauty

I picture it like Judgement Day,' he says finally, his eyes on the water. 'We'll rise up out of our bodies and find each other again in spirit form. We'll meet in that new place, all of us together, and first it'll seem strange, and pretty soon it'll seem strange that you could ever lose someone, or get lost. ↗

— Jennifer Egan

#spirituality #the-future #internet

Uncertainty is caused by a lack of knowledge. Hesitation is the product of fear. ↗

— Internet Archive

#uncertainty #internet

Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible. ↗

— Richard P. Feynman

#learning #scholarship #learn

Leo: Rainbows. Very macho. Annabeth: Butch is our best equestrian, he gets along great with the pegasi. Leo: Rainbows, ponies... Butch: I'm gonna toss you off this chariot. ↗

— Rick Riordan

#butch #leo-valdez #machismo #masculinity #lost

when you're a kid, they tell you that it's what's on the inside that counts. Looks don't matter . But that's not true. Guys like Phoebus in The Hunchback, or Dorian, or the old Kyle Kingsbury-- they can be scumbags to women and still get away with it because they're good-looking. Being ugly is a kind of prisoner. ↗

— Alex Flinn

#truth #prison

If you’re any good at all, you know you can be better. ↗

— Lindsay Buckingham

#excellence #improvement #maturity #practice #maturity

The idea that creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. ↗

— Stephen King

#drugs #writing #writing-craft

Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality. ↗

— John Gardner

#self-pity #destruction

‎It isn't enough to stand up and fight darkness. You've got to stand apart from it, too. You've got to be different from it. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#morality #virtue #virtue