Michael Brooks

“If you can see a thing whole,” he said, “it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives … But close up, a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful earth is, is to see it from the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is... See more

That is, to me, everything is fair game. (If something powerful and negative exists in the world and we don’t write about it, what is writing for?)

Remember The New Yorker . You subscribed because you liked it. Then it taunted you with its endless words, pages and pages demanding to be read. It reminded you of all the time you didn’t have to spend reading The New Yorker . Whenever you glimpsed the growing pile, you felt mild panic. Every time you recycled an unread issue, you felt like a... See more

I think of writing a lot like walking. It’s rarely the most popular, the most effective, or the most efficient way of getting to your destination. I don’t always want to do it, and it’s not always technically enjoyable; sometimes it’s boring or slow, sometimes it’s tiring and pointless, sometimes it’s cold or wet or windy and I’m retracing the same... See more

Indeed the Oak tree King of Limbs, in Britain is over 1,000 years old. It has been growing quietly in place since before the Norman Conquest. The King doesn’t much care about one iPhone model to the next. 

Millennia long scales of engagement with the world around us are almost unimaginable when contrasted with the 2 week long Agile sprints popular... See more