Thought provoking

When there’s too much to care about, what’s a good-hearted person to do?

Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your parents or your idols, not the philosophers or the poets, not your liberal arts education or your twelve-step program, not church or therapy or Tolstoy. No matter how valuable any of that guidance, how pertinent any of that wisdom, in the end you di... See more

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”

It is only when we dare to leave a place, a city, a memory that we realise in earnest what “home” really means, but if this is true, home is always bound to remain unattainable, unreturnable—motherland is a huge castle built on dunes, and when it collapses with the wind, it flows between our fingers like dry sand.

“The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.”

There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag — and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you whe... See more

This is an insight that has been repeated by artists, too. Pablo Picasso: “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.” James Baldwin: “Perhaps the primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.” Bob Dylan: “To be creative you’ve got to be u... See more

Both partners taking accountability for having an outside support network (no attempt to make each other everything)

I can’t do better than Kurt Vonnegut on this subject:

Why are so many people getting divorced today? It’s because most of us don’t have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a

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The longer you live abroad, the more you realize you’ll always be a bit of an outsider, no matter where you are.