quotes

The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is—it must be something you cannot possibly do.

– Henry Moore (sculptor)

Rested, relieved, you look for the path. Ten steps, twenty. Nothing. But the path was right there. You don’t backtrack. Lost people seldom do. Rather, you push on farther, because you are dead certain this is the direction you came from. Every direction you turn, the view is identical, a claustrophobic wall of foliage and shrubbery.

Amity Gaige • Heartwood

Where Are You Really From by Elaine Hsieh Chou

https://bookshop.org/p/books/where-are-you-really-from-stories-elaine-hsieh-chou/d2fd367f639da5dc?ean=9780593298381&next=t

Memory is a shifting thing. I recall the first time I heard my mother share something as happening to her that, in fact, happened to me (if I’m remembering correctly). My older brother and I, when swapping stories, frequently discover that our memories of the same events are different. I’m certain that he is wrong. The truth is, we can only... See more

Capacities

Beneath the ocean's surface, a symphony ripples and rolls, ricochets and hums—and whales pour their songs into the deep soundscape like streams of molten silver.

Just as I'd put off the night river, I'd put off the sea. Both were like death. I am neither old enough nor young enough to write about the sea. It is both too big to be described and too basic to need description.

Charles Foster, Being a Beast

Here is what the sea smells like.
It is more texture than scent, because the sea is primarily made of two substances that have no smell of their own: water and salt. Salt has no smell, but makes the air sting, and so all of the other smells of the sea are layered upon the pang of salt. Water has no smell but instead a comfort. We feel moisture as

This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to

"Art is how you climb out of the abyss after you’ve made yourselves into beasts. You have to hook on and rebuild yourself from outside in. " - The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai.