The New Romantics

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

This is the bottom line : if we don’t make room for deliberate play, we’ll burn out under the weight of seriousness we’ve forced upon our own shoulders.

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

“Once you learn how to learn, you have only to discover what is worth learning.”

Don’t even mention dating or — gasp — sex when the simple act of looking into someone else’s eyes provokes anxiety. But what could they do? Give up their phones and the corporate-controlled, like-driven culture, which is all they’ve ever known? Silent scream emoji!

But E.B. White, one of our last great idealists, was eternally right when he asserted half a century ago that the role of the writer is “to lift people up, not lower them down” — a role each of us is called to with increasing urgency, whatever cog we may be in the machinery of society.

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

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"Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's garden."

- Voltaire