Phenomenal Writing

For the secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for.

It was as if normal existence were a photograph of shapeless things in badly printed colors, but this was a sketch done in a few sharp strokes that made things seem clean, important—and worth doing.

The pianist whose fingers seem supernaturally nimble, the presenter whose message seems viscerally compelling, and the artist whose paintings seem impossibly realistic all wield the same magic: they’ve invested more time than you’d expect.

A friend of mine lost the ability to form memories for a few days last week and it really hammered home that being in the present isn't all that great — it is the layering of the past onto the present that gives stuff meaning.

This makes me think: if having no memory robs the present of meaning, actively forming more memories should make life richer

“This boulevard is never much frequented; and now, at two o’clock, in the stifling heat, it was quite deserted.”

The Karamazovs’ house was far from being in the centre of the town, but it was not quite outside it.

Steinbeck on the one story:

I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one... Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil... There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chip

His nervous shudder had passed into a fever that made him feel shivering; in spite of the heat he felt cold. With a kind of effort he began almost unconsciously, from some inner necessity, to stare at all the objects before him, as though looking for something to distract his attention; but he did not succeed, and kept lapsing every moment into bro