As the writer and activist Naomi Klein puts it, ‘There are no non-radical options left before us.’34 I believe imagination is the only thing we have that is – or could be – radical enough to get us through, provided it is accompanied, of course, by bravery, and by action.

Rob Hopkins • From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to

Do things fast. Things don’t actually take much time (as measured by a stopwatch); resistance/procrastination does. “Slow is fake”. If no urgency exists, impose some.

https://nabeelqu.co/principles

...let me make a general observation—the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

F Scott Fitzgerald

‘We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will…Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer. If we turn our mind towards the good, it is impossible that little by little the whole soul will not be attracted thereto in spite of itself.’

“To suffer is one thing; another thing is living with the photographed images of suffering, which does not necessarily strengthen conscience and the ability to be compassionate. It can also corrupt them. Once one has seen such images, one has started down the road of seeing more — and more. Images transfix. Images anesthetize.”

Susan Sontag - On

the notion of adhering to one ‘true self’ flies in the face of much research on how people evolve with experience, discovering facets of themselves they would never have unearthed through introspection alone - Herminia Ibarra

“I came to understand the [meditation] task not as emptying your head of thoughts, but rather resisting the tendency to narrate things to yourself in words. I noticed that this interior monologuing would lead me along familiar, superficial trains of thought, to recent memories associated with certain feelings, say, and soon enough back to mundane

Hanif Kureishi:

“Conversation is useless in the best sense. It’s anti-capitalist – you don’t make money out of it; there is no material gain. There is only the pleasure of sitting with another human being, of listening to them, of an ephemeral exchange which has no meaning beyond a shared temporary gratification. There are laughs, jokes, teasings,

“A lot of writing consists of waiting around for the aquarium to settle so you can see the fish. Walking around muttering seems to hasten the process. Taking public transportation nowhere helps. Looking out the bus window lets the back of your mind move forward. Don’t listen to anything but natural sound. Don’t look at anything you have to turn on.