The New Romantics

When I had the flip phone, I had to put in effort to get to places, to talk to people. Everything was a task. Now it’s easy to do things. I guess I still don’t like needing the crutch of a smartphone, though I couldn’t figure out how to go on without one.”

This is the quiet art of living well. It does not demand that we abandon the world, but that we engage with it more mindfully. It asks that we slow down, that we look more closely, that we listen more carefully. For in doing so, we discover that much of what we seek—clarity, peace, even strength—was always within reach. It was simply waiting for us

... See more

Myles helped me avoid an easy error:

Putting the tool before the craft.

In a culture obsessed with speed, certainty, and specialization, Leonardo’s secret feels almost rebellious: take your time, learn widely, think deeply.

Buying used books is the absolute antithesis of the subscription model that is destroying everything I love.

Basic dynamic in life: there is nothing meaningful enough to make you happy that could not make you sad if you lost it. This is the paradox of feeling, and it’s inherent and existential. If things inspire real positive emotion in you then they are necessarily things in which you are sufficiently invested that you would feel negative emotions when... See more

I contend that the creator is an individual who manages a most formidable challenge: to wed the most advanced understandings achieved in a domain with the kinds of problems, questions, issues, and sensibilities that most characterized his or her life as a wonder-filled child.