Quotes
"The role which the artist plays in society is to revive the primitive, anarchic instincts which have been sacrificed for the illusion of living in comfort… It is not the most comfortable life in the world but I know that it is life, and I am not going to trade it for an anonymous life in the brotherhood of man—which is either sure death, or
... See more–Henry Miller
“Our personal libraries are an intimate view into our soul, a letter of introduction and a language more honest than any talk. Books are also a weapon to heal ourselves, understand the real world, understand the loneliness or pain we carry.”
“Your personal canon reflects your intellectual and creative foundation, the influences that have formed your worldview, guided your thinking, or left a permanent mark on you. It’s a record of the things that have shaped you—intellectually, emotionally, and aesthetically.
I consider a personal canon a tool for intentionality. When so much of what we
... See moreDirect quotes from “The Digital Meadow’s” on Substack “How to Curate Your Personal Canon”
Each word is a portable cathedral in which we clarify and sanctify our experience, a reliquary and a laboratory, holding the history of our search for meaning and the pliancy of the possible future, of there being richer and deeper dimensions of experience than those we name in our surface impressions. In the roots of words we find a portal to the... See more
Maria Popova • The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name
there is an italian phrase: ‘gazofilacio’ meaning: treasure chamber of the mind. it is the word given to the ragged little store of poems you carry inside of you, wherever you go, always intimately rekindling and redirecting your attention.
Sally Rooney
“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words. George Orwell made this clear in his novel 1984. But another way to control the minds of people is to control their perceptions. If you can get them to see the world as you do,
... See more—Philip K. Dick, “How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later,” 1978
the truest books are “mirrors” in which we discover not the writer’s wisdom, but our own.
A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses.
All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessences.
Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes
... See moreArthur Rimbaud