rob hardy

Kurt Vonnegut on picking a lane:

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way—although I would not be sorry if you wrote one,... See more

one of the most exhausting habits, maybe even addictions, is the desire to want to be seen accurately, judged correctly, understood perfectly

there is power in letting distortion exist

when the need to be understood loosens, the energy returns to what actually wants to be made

Once, we made sense of the world with sweeping narratives that provided a comforting sense of mastery. Now, with those narratives shattered beyond repair by a reality too complex for us to fathom, a new kind of coping mechanism is emerging—one where we make peace with the limits of our agency rather than pretending to overcome them. The task is no... See more

God makes you walk in circles until you’re exhausted enough to just be yourself

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

— Gustave Flaubert