“While the blank page taunts with its emptiness, it also allows for infinite possibilities. But now he is saddled with fifty-one words that feel significant. They are evidence he has begun something and he ought to keep going.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/fifty-...

“If truth and reality can clearly come only from the subject and his consciousness, then illusion, which is the opposite of these, must necessarily come from elsewhere. (1/2)

“By changing your perspective, your mood also changes you. It shapes your behaviour, it modifies your speech, it alters the way you look. It can do these things because the way you are is less a response to the world around you than it is a response to your own self.” Read more:

“Every gain has to be paid for: The automatic machine is fool-proof; but just because it is fool-proof it is also grace-proof.” — Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy

“Compassion is actually a kind of self-interest, where the self I'm interested in helping is not just this body that is mine but also the entire world. My concern is for both myself and the world as one, and I care for both as one.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/compas...

“Compassion directed towards another person is also self-compassion. When I treat others with compassion, I also make the world better for myself. A more compassionate world is one that is more empathetic, more cooperative, and more loving.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/compassion...

“Man is not at home in the universe, despite all the efforts of philosophers and metaphysicians to provide a soothing syrup. Thought is still a narcotic. (1/2)

“All art is partly about struggle, about discovering the courage to overcome. This is shown through the existence of every last artwork, regardless of whether it takes the form of a painting, a performance, or a poem. Every artwork helps us become stronger, more courageous, more defiant beings.”

“Writing or saying the truth is equivalent to death, since we cannot tell the truth. It is forbidden because it hurts everyone. We never say the truth, we must lie, mostly as a result of our two needs: our need for love and cowardice.” — Hélène Cixous, Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing

“For many people, this kind of community does not exist. It has become so easy to meet our material needs through transactional means that community is now felt to be unnecessary. The social benefits of community are no longer believed to be worth the social burdens that follow from it.” Read more:

“The past – as something that remains self-identical and is always to be retrieved in the same form – does not exist. Digital memory consists of indifferent – as it were, undead – points of presence. It lacks the extended horizon constituting the temporality of the living. (1/2)

“Or at least, she thinks she connects with others. This is what most scares her. If so much of her is hidden, and so much of them is hidden, then what is really being connected? Who are the entities that are connecting? Are they real people, and is one of them her?” Read more:

“Art that plays with the idea of mechanical reproduction — the obvious example is the work of Andy Warhol — teaches us something of what it would be like to be a thing, an object.” — Zadie Smith, “Man Versus Corpse”

“To eliminate my anxiety, I need to see the attachment that's producing it and loosen myself from it. But when I'm burdened by the immense weight of the feeling, it can be incredibly difficult to do this effectively. I first need to shift my attention in order for the feeling to weaken.” Read more:

“There is a way to Reality in and through the soul, and there is a way to Reality in and through the world. Whether the ultimate goal can be reached by following either of these ways to the exclusion of the other is to be doubted. (1/2)

“It's true that our suffering arises from our way of life, from our perspective, from the unnecessary complexity we create, and from our reactive and distracted behaviour. But these are only symptoms of the problem.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/you-mu...

“The only person who can make you more aware is you. Others can encourage your awareness, they can provide you with opportunities to see more, but it is you who must allow yourself to look.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/you-must-s...

“The room had taken on an unutterable familiarity, like the truthful familiarity of dreams. And, as in dreams, what I can’t reproduce for you is the essential color of its atmosphere. (1/2)

“Engaging regularly in collective action requires great energy and attention. But oppressive systems often rob of us of these things. They do this by compelling unnecessary actions that physically drain us, and by manufacturing a neverending fight for survival that mentally drains us.” Read more:

“Light breaks forth: the burst of light, the dispersion that resonates or vibrates dazzlingly — and in clarity clamors but does not clarify. The breaking forth of light, the shattering reverberation of a language to which no hearing can be given.” — Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster

“We do not see any harm in prioritizing our desires. We take the happiness that results from their satisfaction as a sign we're doing the right thing. But often our most pressing needs are in conflict with our most cherished wants.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/wants-...

“We must not, for a moment, ever think that our exploration of discourse is free, complete; rather, those explorations are always policed by discourses already set in place.” — Samuel R. Delany, “The Rhetoric of Sex/The Discourse of Desire”

“My words do not exist in a vacuum. You're hearing them and evaluating them. You're judging me, even if you tell me you aren't. For you do not have total control over your judgments. Some of them arise automatically, without any conscious choice.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/what-m...

“Time contracts the sphere of banality. (Banality is, strictly speaking, always a category of the contemporary.) What was banal can, with the passage of time, become fantastic.” — Susan Sontag, “Notes on “Camp””

“There will always be others who won't want to include me in their lives. This is a harsh truth I must accept. This doesn't mean that the person who has rejected me is bad or that they have wronged me. For the other side of this truth is that I too would reject someone I do not value highly enough.”

“Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. (1/2)

“The fiction an artwork presents is grounded in the reality of the game we're already playing. This grounding allows us to see how the new scope the artwork offers is compatible with our existing game. It shows us how our game could carry on in a different way than it does at present.” Read more:

“The task of art is to expand the scope of the game. It is to show us that there are possible moves that are not included in the official rules. All art is a kind of fiction, an imagining of what could be but does not yet exist.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/changing-t...

“Wisdom is silent, and the most effective propaganda for truth is the force of personal example.” — Henry Miller, The Rosy Crucifixion

“Seeing no harm, you seek to fulfill your desire. You devote yourself to it, both in thought and action. You become more and more enamoured with the idea of its fulfillment. You start putting considerable time & resources into it. And then, after all this, you finally get what you want.” Read more:

“Any loss of identity prompts people to seek reassurance and rediscovery of themselves by testing, and even by violence. Today, the electric revolution, the wired planet, and the information environment involve everybody in everybody to the point of individual extinction.” — Marshall McLuhan

“The tension between the self and the other often produces curiosity, the desire to know the other person better and incorporate their otherness into the self. The other is not the self, so there is always something the other has that the self does not, and vice versa.” Read more:

“She hides most of her feelings and shares only what passes through a narrow filter. He thinks most people do this, but she has taken the practice to an extreme. She hides almost everything, supplying little more than a carefully-curated portrait of herself.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/hidden...

“Thinking is trying to think the unthinkable: thinking the thinkable is not worth the effort. Painting is trying to paint what you cannot paint and writing is writing what you cannot know before you have written: it is preknowing and not knowing, blindly, with words. (1/2)

“All I want is to feel better, and it doesn't seem like this could actually harm me. But if I'm attached to this desire, it will produce suffering just like any other, as I will manipulate my attention and actions to reach the desired result.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/wantin...

“Capitalism is obsessed with death. The unconscious fear of death is what spurs it on. The threat of death is what stirs its compulsion of accumulation and growth. This compulsion drives us towards not only ecological but also mental catastrophe.” — Byung-chul Han, Capitalism and the Death Drive

“When failure happens repeatedly, you begin to close yourself off. You begin to narrow the scope of your actions in order to reduce the risk of further grief. You fall into the stagnation of habit, a kind of repetitive non-life, where you go through the same motions day in, day out.” Read more:

“To act boldly and keep yourself open to the world is a courageous choice. It means accepting that you'll fail sometimes, and that it will mean pain. It will be painful simply because you care.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/the-pain-o...

“Man had endowed [machines] with intelligence, and, in doing so, had made them an accomplice of his mad adventures…. The myth of the golem — the machine that rebelled against its creator — was a lie, a fiction invented by the guilty for the sake of self-exoneration.” — Stanisław Lem

“I want the meaning of all things to be revealed at once. But even a cursory awareness of my relationship with the world should make it clear that this is an impossible demand to satisfy. Meanings are often lacking and there are even things I cannot understand at all.” Read more:

“Fragments of this kind are literary seedlings. Many among them may indeed be sterile — still if only some grow.” — Novalis, Miscellaneous Observations

“Order is not established through institutions and systems that impose control through force, but through agreements between ordinary people on what they must each do to create an environment conducive to their own success and happiness.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/order-...

“Everything that is not absolutely necessary to your happiness has been removed from the visual horizon. The dream is not only of happiness, but of happiness conceived in perfect isolation.” — Zadie Smith, “Find Your Beach”

“She finds it almost impossible to understand people or their priorities. Why don't they just say what they want from her? If they would be clear with her, then she would happily be clear in return. But instead things are always muddled and foggy.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/the-ob...

“You are the only one who can never see yourself except as an image; you never see your eyes unless they are dulled by the gaze they rest upon the mirror or the lens (1/2)

“Because probability is so foreign to ordinary thought, it's easy to mistakenly believe that highly improbable events are actually impossible. There's no space in our set of expectations for events that are so rare as to almost never happen.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/what-s...

“Language is what eases the pain of living with other people, language is what makes the wounds come open again.” — Anne Carson, Plainwater

“Sometimes our idea does not get across and is instead replaced in the mind of the reader by a different idea that was never intended. We are then forced to double back, to try to say what we've already said in a new way and hopefully with greater clarity.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/writin...

“We trust that our written language is doing what we want, that it's expressing the core of our thoughts and feelings, and that others will know and understand these things... Most of the time, the written word does its job admirably. But most of the time is not always.” Read more:

“I call experience a voyage to the end of the possible of man. Anyone may choose not to embark on this voyage, but if he does embark on it, this supposes the negation of the authorities, the existing values which limit the possible. (1/2)