Natalie Audelo

incredible generosity of spirit

The things we think will make us feel happier – acing exams, securing a dream job, buying that dress – usually don’t, but small habits can make a big difference. One of them is talking to strangers.

My being an artist is not a question of being able to make artwork. It is a question of my willingness to make something imperfect, or ugly, and how much resilience I have to face that reality repeatedly.

Today’s cult of convenience fails to acknowledge that difficulty is a constitutive feature of human experience. Convenience is all destination and no journey. But climbing a mountain is different from taking the tram to the top, even if you end up at the same place. We are becoming people who care mainly or only about outcomes. We ar

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We’ve reached what Tocqueville described: downright egotism. It’s the ideological wall I find impossible to scale: I don’t know how to make you care about other people.

As the years unfold, you’ll see that all your questions aren’t so urgent. The only ones to care about are the ones you’ll never answer. And you don’t have to get caught up in your plans as you did when you were in your twenties.