I care, in the end, about expressing my obdurate singularity at any cost.

The seeking was passive, the reward pale, the sense of agency bled dry. I checked reflexively, without intention.

It all comes back. Perhaps it is difficult to see the value in having one’s self back in that kind of mood, but I do see it; I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m... See more

I’m convinced that it’s going to become a straightforwardly high-status, elite play to renounce phones, social media, and many other aspects of digital culture. In a world of insane information abundance and always-on connection, reclaiming the stillness of your own mind will be akin to flying private.

If I’m right, we’ll see a growing divide betwee

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Or do such Sisyphean philosophies—that “the road is life”—turn out to be bourgeois luxuries indulged by those safe enough to pretend this is all there is? Does the hunger and hope of the migrant show us something more fundamentally human? Maybe our craving for rest, refuge, arrival, home is a hunger that can’t be edited—the heart an obstinate palim

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If we do not understand that most people had no choice but to devote their lives to growing and cooking food, we are incapable of comprehending that the foods of Culinary Modernism — egalitarian, available more or less equally to all, without demanding the disproportionate amount of the resources of time or money that traditional foodstuffs did — a... See more

My definition of good transfiguration is allowing people I trust to show me what they see in me clearly. We see ourselves with a great deal of blurriness, often with a negative tilt. Other people can see the line of continuity threaded through every seemingly disjointed experience, or the richness in your raw material. Other people can very much he... See more

Writing increases your rate of revelation. This is true irrespective of the subject because writing is a process of reflection, assertion, and iteration.

Writing clarifies your own ideas. Writing begets new ideas too. Writing lets you explore ideas in depth even if you won’t have time to act on them all. Writing shows people how you think and lets ... See more

Steve Jobs energy transference was so strong it was labelled a Reality Distortion Field. He could bend other people's perception of reality with one interaction. I don't think this is some mystical woo-woo energy. It's a combination of intensity, frame, belief, body language, optimism and vocal tonality.