qvotes
A great writer mimicking, on the page, the dynamic energy of human thought is as about as close as we can get to modeling pure empathy.
Maria Popova • How to Be an Instrument of Kindness in a Harsh World: George Saunders on Unthinking the Mind, Unstorying the Self, and the 3 Antidotes to Your Suffering
Life is a physical process that gives rise to systems that are statistically unlikely to assemble and persist (by themselves)
Article
The invisible hand isn’t invisible because it’s magical; it’s invisible because we’re not supposed to see whose hand it actually is.
We Cannot Talk About AI Without Talking About Capitalism, Fascism, and Liberty - Christopher Butler
I know no greater catalyst of creativity — in art or in life — than constraint. It is the boundaries, chosen or imposed, that give shape to our lives; it is within them that we become truly creative about the kind of life we want to live. Without the constraint of bones, there would be no wings.
An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days
A part of us always knows what we need to hear and can always tell us where we need to go. The great challenge of life is not to silence that voice with fear or with hope, with indifference or compulsion or the tyranny of should.
An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days
But as I replaced contempt with curiosity, I came to see it simply as a coping mechanism for the difficulty of living with all this uncertainty, the difficulty of being so opaque to ourselves — a language for interpreting our intentions and experiences, the way the primary purpose of prayer is to clarify our hopes and fears.
An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days
on tarot
Kurt Vonnegut, talking about when he tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope:
“Oh, she says well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of
... See more
What I’m really concerned about is reaching one person. And that person may be myself for all I know.” — Jorge Luis Borges