“I’m aware that I can’t say everything I know, I only know when painting or pronouncing, syllables blind of meaning. And if here I must use words, they must bear an almost merely bodily meaning.” — Clarice Lispector, Água Viva

“Often the feeling of anxiety is so powerful that it overwhelms any other feelings. But sometimes it is more subtle and experienced only as a kind of tension or numbness. When anxiety is present, it can cause me to take actions that are not only unnecessary but also harmful.” Read more:

“Reading is ignorant. It begins with what it reads and in this way discovers the force of a beginning. It is receiving and hearing, not the power to decipher and analyze […] it does not comprehend (strictly speaking), it attends. A marvelous innocence.” — Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation

“People just want you to shut up and follow the usual ways. That's how he sees things. He tries to do this to the best of his ability, but it takes every last drop of energy he can muster, including the energy it would take to be honest with himself.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/the-ot...

“All art may be treated as a mode of proof, an assertion of accuracy in the spirit of maximum vehemence. Any work of art may be seen as an attempt to be indisputable with respect to the actions it represents.” — Susan Sontag, “Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie”

“The truth is that the world is always your world — you can always see whatever you would like to see in it. But the truth is equally that the world is not yours at all — it is always determined by factors that reside far outside your control.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/seeing...

“It is the utter simplicity of life which defeats man. He has turned the earth inside out in a frantic effort to attain security, to arrive at wisdom. (1/2)

“It is the feeling of absolute contingency that produces so much anxiety over our most important choices. It is because we know we could be pulled away from what is best by another option we might want more or fear less that freedom can feel like a curse instead of a blessing.” Read more:

“When our awareness is broad and deep, we understand that empathy is not optional. Empathy is a fundamental part of our sensory apparatus, which means the needs of others cannot be ignored without effectively lobotomizing ourselves.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/necessary-...

“Writing is good: it’s what never ends. The simplest, most secure other circulates inside me. Like blood: there’s no lack of it. It can become impoverished. But you manufacture it and replenish it. In me is the word of blood, which will not cease before my end.” — Hélène Cixous

“Joy comes from creative action and what is most creative is also necessarily challenging. Genuine creativity is always difficult because it means doing what has never been done before. To engage with the world creatively is to willingly take on this formidable task.” suliqyre.com/posts/creati...

“There seem to be at least two ways to highlight some of the structures of a given discourse. Both may boil down to the same thing. One is the critical observation of what is around us, precisely while on the alert for things that contravene what we expect. (1/2)

“But the signal might still persist. This can easily happen when it takes the form of general malaise, despair, or melancholy. Here, the signal does not seem to tell me which need is unmet and trying to analyze it does not reveal any obvious course of action. Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/my-own...

“Parmenides understood that no matter how many “parts” he saw, how much diversity and change his senses reported, reality had to consist of a One, which was Unchanging. (1/2)

“Her habits are turning her into a machine, and the last thing she wants to be is a machine. A machine does the same thing over and over again, and what is the point of that for a human being who desperately needs to make art?” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/whatev...

“It’s so hard to speak and say things that can’t be said. It’s so silent. How to translate the silence of the real encounter between the two of us? (1/2)

“When you hear someone speak, you don't just understand their words, you feel them too. Beyond the semantic content that is processed cognitively, there is also an emotional payload that arrives just as immediately as any rational meaning.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/intuit...

“The doctrine that God is in the world has an important practical corollary: the sacredness of Nature, and the sinfulness and folly of man’s overweening efforts to be her master rather than her intelligently docile collaborator.” — Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy

“When someone adopts beliefs far outside our usual territory, it can become almost impossible to communicate with them. For us, the challenge seems to be to make particular facts known to the other, while for them, their security seems to depend on holding onto their existing beliefs.” Read more:

“We want to bring the anxious person back over to our side directly, but this is not possible. They have become too alienated from our shared form of life, sometimes so much so that it can look like they're living in another reality altogether.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/reaching-t...

“It is with a sort of mute, inevitable, inexplicable determination, like that in dreams, that the fascinating specters of misery and pain have always lurked among the background figures in this carnival of a world. (1/2)

“Compassionate action requires that I be fully present and responsive to what is happening, while also maintaining the distance that allows me to remain free of attachment. Perhaps the most challenging problem of awareness is to see that this paradox is livable.” suliqyre.com/posts/the-pa...

“But if there is no cosmic Plan? What a mockery, to live in exile when no one sent you there. Exile from a place, moreover, that does not exist.” — Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

“To contribute to the project of humanity in any way is a great accomplishment, and to create art that might one day become the tools and materials that help future artists make something even better is an enormous success.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/to-be-...

“Whereas representation attempts to absorb simulation by interpreting it as a false representation, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation itself as a simulacrum.” — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

“I suddenly feel the desire to be down there, in the street, observing the action more closely. No it's not that, I realize. I don't want to merely observe... There must be something more.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/someth...

“There are certain eras which are too complex, too deafened by contradictory historical and intellectual experiences, to hear the voice of sanity. Sanity becomes compromise, evasion, a lie.” — Susan Sontag, “Simone Weil”

“Pointing out hypocrisy is the worst kind of criticism. It shifts the focus to mere consistency, rather than concentrating on the goodness (or lack thereof) of the actions themselves.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/beyond...

“The age of haste, its cinematographic succession of point-like presences, has no access to beauty or to truth. Only in lingering contemplation, even an ascetic restraint, do things unveil their beauty, their fragrant essence.” — Byung-chul Han, The Scent of Time

“We want to be the perfect human animal, the one that has optimized its environment through control and thrives endlessly as a result. But in focusing completely on this singular goal, we miss something important. We forget to ask who it is that will thrive.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/the-ex...

“A human being is not just an animal that exists as an object in physical space. A human being is also an experiencing subject. And the difficulty with experiencing subjects is that they reflect on their experiences and they develop values.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/the-experi...

“I may live for thirty years, or perhaps forty, or maybe just one day: therefore I have resolved to use this day ... in such a way that if not one day in my whole past life has been used well, this one by the help of God will be.” — Søren Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers

“But the distinction between what is real and what is virtual is not always clear or obvious. Our deep concern for real success is often actually a concern for virtual success, in terms of artificial markers like status, wealth, or fame.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/real-a...

“What I want is to open up. I want to know what’s inside me. I want everybody to open up. I’m like an imbecile with a can opener in his hand, wondering where to begin — to open up the earth. I know that underneath the mess everything is marvelous.” — Henry Miller, The Rosy Crucifixion

“Sometimes I'll discover that I've misled myself. I've allowed my actions to be less compassionate than they otherwise could have been. There is no point in dwelling in shame or guilt over this, but I still need to take responsibility.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/fallin...

“Like Plotinus’ concept of concentric rings of emanation, we encounter our Others in gradually increasing intensity and clarity; they become clearer to us continually. (1/2)

“There's that pesky “should” again. Who is responsible for it? Again, it has to be him. He has imposed these standards on himself — standards about using time efficiently, about getting things done, about making progress.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/who-is...

“When all is said, what remains to be said is the disaster. Ruin of words, demise writing, faintness faintly murmuring: what remains without remains (the fragmentary).” — Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster

“Joy ignores my intentions just as it ignores any effort to keep it. I cannot choose joy any more than I can refuse it. Joy arrives on its own and when it arrives I must experience it.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/myster...

“And that seemed like hell to me, that destruction of layers and layers of human archeology. Hell, because the world held no more human meaning for me, and man no longer had human meaning for me. (1/2)

“You feel happy when you look back on all you've accomplished to get here. But when you try to sit with the present moment or look towards the future, there is a distinct feeling of dread that you cannot seem to shake.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/a-furt...

“You wonder if this is all there really is to life. If it always ends with this feeling of nothingness. If the void ultimately consumes us all. You're wildly successful by every available metric and still you feel no joy.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/a-further-...

“Never affirm, always allude: allusions are made to test the spirit and probe the heart.” — Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before

“Creativity requires action — it is the movement from intuitive seeing to actual seeing, from having an idea to having an artwork before you.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/creati...

“The secret of philosophy may not be to know oneself, nor to know where one is going, but rather to go where the other is going; not to dream oneself, but rather to dream what others dream; (1/2)

“The future is never something I can know precisely, but it's exactly this that I must learn to see. Awareness of the future is really awareness of the scope of possibility. It is to see that this scope does not have any hard limits.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/past-a...

“Even the most seemingly abstract, sublimely theoretical, mathematicized achievements of science have in reality moved only a step or two away from a prehistoric, coarsely sensory-based, anthropomorphic understanding of the world around us.” — Stanisław Lem, Solaris

“She does nothing but breathe in and out in the safety of her self-imposed darkness. Still, thoughts bubble up inside her. Thoughts about her mother, about her art, about her friends, about what to eat for lunch.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/a-chan...

“Eros and depression are opposites. Eros pulls the subject out of itself, toward the Other. Depression, in contrast, plunges the subject into itself.” — Byung-chul Han, The Agony of Eros

“Compassion is never an obligation. It is not something anyone can be required to do because of an agreement with or duty to another person. Compassion is chosen simply because it is personally felt to be an absolute necessity.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/compas...