“Whether or not it draws on new scientific research, technology is a branch of moral philosophy, not of science.”
–Paul Goodman, “Can Technology Be Humane?” The New York Review of Books, November 20, 1969
Quotes
Quote: “The art of writing is…”
“The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.”
Gustave Flaubert (via absynthe-words)
Quote: “poems are like dreams…”
But poems are like dreams: in them you put what you don’t know you know.
Adrienne Rich, ‘When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision’ On Lies, Secrets, and Silence (via thedaysarenotfullenough) (via libraryland)
Quote: “I use the Internet intensely….”
I didn’t foresee that my whole little life was going to revolve around this object, this computer. That’s worth exploring to me, not simply being critical of it. If you’re going to have a movie about people my age in L.A., they’re going to have to be online a lot of the time or it’s not realistic. But for anything to happen, they have to stop being online. All of those little moments throughout the day when you’re like “What am I doing? Who am I?” I just check my e-mail, or I go online. That sort of mini-lost feeling isn’t new, but I’m curious what happens when you don’t really have to see it through, ever. There is always a distraction.
Miranda July, on the characters in her new film, The Future (via thesalinasvalley)
Quote: “Our brains are affected … by the media we use”
“I’ve always been suspicious of those who seek to describe the effects of digital media in generational terms, drawing sharp contrasts between young “Internet natives” and old “Internet immigrants.” Such distinctions strike me as misleading, if not specious. If you look at statistics … the average adult has spent more time online than the average kid. …. And the idea that those who grow up peering at screens will somehow manage to avoid the cognitive toll exacted by multitasking and persistent interruptions is a fantasy contradicted by neuroscientific research. All of us, young and old alike, have similar neurons and synapses, and our brains are affected in similar ways by the media we use.”
Nick Carr, from the afterword of the paperback edition of The Shallows (via wwnorton)
Quote: “Lock up your libraries if you like…”
“Lock up your libraries if you like, but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
Virginia Woolf (via nocureforcuriosity)
Quote: “Art is not a handicraft…”
“Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.”
Leo Tolstoy (via subcreation)
Quote: “The short story is the art form…”
“The short story is the art form that deals with the individual when there is no longer a society to absorb him, and when he is compelled to exist, as it were, by his own inner light.”
Frank O’Connor (via libraryland)
Quote: “Turn the unspeakable into words”
“The writer’s job is to turn the unspeakable into words – not just any words, but, if you can, into rhythm and blues.”
Anne Lamott (via teachingliteracy)
Gen-Yers changing the workplace
Gen-Yers are using their personal networks and profiles as an extension of their professional personality. Even though they are using Facebook to mostly socialize with family and friends, they are inadvertently blending the two. Sixty-four percent of Gen-Y fails to list their employer on their profiles, yet they add an average of 16 co-workers each to their “friend” group.
Literature takes a habit of mind that has disappeared. It requires silence, some form of isolation, and sustained concentration in the presence of an enigmatic thing.
Philip Roth (via libraryland)
To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.
Edgar Allan Poe (via bookoasis)
Illiteracy in America
44 million adults in the U.S. can’t read well enough to read a simple story to a child.
National Adult Literacy Survey (via firstbook)
Quote
A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others.
~Leo Rosten (via solitudeandsolicitude)
Quote
When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.
~Michel de Montaigne (via libraryland)
Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it. Those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind.
Jeanette Winterson (via tacit-delinquency)
Quote: Patti Smith
Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.
Patti Smith (via libraryland)
You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.
Annie Proulx (via scribblersabode)
What you seek is seeking you.
Rumi (via libraryland)
I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.
C.S.Lewis
Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.
C. S. Lewis (via ermarty)
Schola Optima Studium Librorum
“The best school is the study of books.”
Quote: “Stop talking about ‘social’ “
Social is not a feature. Social is not an application. Social is a deep human motivation that drives our behaviour almost every second that we’re awake. It doesn’t matter if we’re online or offline, on a browser or using an app. Humans are social creatures.
For me to remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off: the ones that made the sacrifice of the following day a trivial one.
Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011
Coffeehouse Junkie 