“Pure orientation towards the goal deprives the in-between space of all meaning, emptying it to become a corridor without any value of its own. … The rich meaning of the path disappears.” — Byung-chul Han, The Scent of Time

“Doubts pile up, one on top of the other. But in this confused state of semi-wakefulness he has no tolerance for such thoughts. They seem to belong to another world and not this one.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/no-tim...

“When I’m writing, I feel again what is apparently the only paradoxical certainty: that what gets in the way of writing is having to use words.” — Clarice Lispector, Too Much of Life

“The simple fact is that we are forced to live with a degree of injustice as long as the systems that produce and maintain injustices continue to exist. Our lives will not be fair, despite our belief that they should be.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/justic...

“Impossible to imagine dying anywhere else than in the silence of the desert. Of all things, not to pass away amid sound and fury. To recover the only freedom, which is that of space and emptiness.” — Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories V

“When we learn that attachment to desire can produce incredible suffering, we might start to believe that all desire is harmful. But desire itself is neither good nor bad. It is a natural consequence of the kind of beings we are and the way we relate to our world.” suliqyre.com/posts/natura...

“Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.” — Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“We desperately want to bring about the causes that will produce the effect of satisfying our desire. That we can see this causal linkage so clearly and certainly is what makes it so easy for us to become attached.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/natural-de...

“The world is alive and no living thing has any remedy. That’s our fortune.” — Roberto Bolaño, The Last Interview: And Other Conversations

“Your many emotions drive you to take certain actions that feel in some way necessary to you. Art helps you understand the scope of that necessity — it shows you something more of what you must do and also what you must not do.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/feelin...

“For me fiction is a way of asking: what if things were other than they are? And a central component of that is to ask: what if I was different than I am? I have always found the practice of writing fiction far more an escape from self than an exploration of it. — Zadie Smith, “The I Who Is Not Me”

“While I need to see more of what's happening in the world around me, I also need to be able to look inwards at myself, including at my own body. By seeing my bodily needs more clearly, I allow for self-compassion to arise, which will help meet those needs.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/bodily...

“Everywhere in the world, she sees incredible need. A need requires a response and she is that response. She knows she must be this. There is no question of alternatives because she knows what she must choose.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/the-re...

“Art seems the best genre-set in which to allow total freedom of expression (the full range, as Kenneth Koch put it, of “wishes, lies, and dreams”) because that genre-set is the symbol-making engine for the culture.” — Samuel R. Delany, Shorter Views

“Each and every individual existence is continuously connected to the existence of others. This interdependence extends to the world itself, without which no individual life would be possible.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/unboun...

“Although meaningless in a tribal context, numbers and statistics assume mythic and magical qualities of infallibility in literate societies.” — Marshall McLuhan, Take Today

“Attachment pushes you to look away from the the whole of your experience. This is how it produces suffering, and how it can cause you to make choices that limit your ability to see truth and respond to it.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/the-fo...

“In order for a book to exist, it is sufficient that it be possible. Only the impossible is excluded. For example, no book is also a staircase, though there are no doubt books ... whose structure corresponds to that of a staircase.” — Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel”

“You can feel yourself mentally squirming in an attempt to get away from these thoughts. Notice this feeling and examine it carefully. It's terrible to look at these things. You want to escape. You want to do anything other than think about this.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/the-force-...

“Let my solitude not destroy me. Let my solitude keep me company. Give me the courage to face myself. Let me know how to be left with the nothing and feel nonetheless as if I were filled with everything.” — Clarice Lispector, A Breath of Life

“Not every instance of control follows from choice. Attempts at control are often reactions to the many kinds of suffering that arise from attachment. My bad habit arose as a reaction to anxiety: it is the action I take to try to control that anxiety.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/bad-ha...

“We want to decipher skies and paintings, go behind these starry backgrounds or these painted canvases and, like kids trying to find a gap in a fence, try to look through the cracks in the world.” — Georges Bataille, “The Cruel Practice of Art”

“The same situation could play out in ten or twenty different ways, and only one of these is the one depicted in the story. Regardless, fiction still manages to reveal truths about actual life and the experience of being human.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/truth-...

“The best stories I have heard were pointless, the best books those whose plot I can never remember, the best individuals those whom I never get anywhere with.” — Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi

“You have to change in order to be the person you must be. In order to live. That's what living is. Changing once and then again. Changing without end.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/in-ord...

“We humans appear as particularly lively, intense, aware nodes of relation in an infinite network of connections, simple or complicated, direct or hidden, strong or delicate, temporary or very long-lasting. (1/2)

“Through attention to the suffering of others, we begin to feel more of what others feel. We experience not only our own suffering but also the suffering of other people through empathy. To feel overwhelmed by this experience is entirely normal.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/so-muc...

“The human mind is only capable of absorbing a few things at a time. … We observe a fraction of the process, like hearing the vibration of a single string in an orchestra of supergiants. (1/2)

“We can imagine a better life and we desperately want to get there. But we are easily distracted because we become attached not only to our desires and aversions but also to the vast network of beliefs that allow us to be functional members of our society.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/the-si...

“Literature professes to be important while at the same time considering itself an object of doubt. ... It seeks itself: this is more than it has a right to do, because literature may be one of those things which deserve to be found but not to be sought.” — Maurice Blanchot, The Work of Fire

“When all of our actions originate in compassion, life is incredibly simple and straightforward. We do what is most needed and necessary in this and every moment, and by doing so, we create joy for ourselves and the people around us.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/the-simple...

“The interpreter, without actually erasing or rewriting the text, is altering it. But he can’t admit to doing this. He claims to be only making it intelligible, by disclosing its true meaning.” — Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation”

“Poems are capable of revealing truths we would not otherwise be able to reach. They do this by leveraging the metaphors we use most — those of ordinary language — to reveal facets of experience that have previously gone unnoticed.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/the-wo...

“How under all these circumstances could I possibly perceive the good in what comes about? I can’t even see what comes about, since each end (synthesis) is the new thesis against which a further antithesis appears. The becoming never ceases—there are syntheses but never a true end. — Philip K. Dick

“My own awareness needs to include an awareness of the other's awareness. Every act of compassion must be tailored to the person it is for or it will not be able to meet any need or provide any help.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/unappr...

“Perception can take place only when there is no division between the observer and the observed. Perception can take place only in the very act of exploring. To explore implies that there is no division between the observer and the observed.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti, Total Freedom

“The effectiveness of the phrase has little to do with reality. But it still does something. By uttering the words, they become, in a way, true for him, even if this is not the kind of truth that can be tested or verified.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/helpfu...

“When I write, all those that we don’t know we can be write themselves from me, without exclusion, without prediction, and everything that we will be calls us to the tireless, intoxicating, tender-costly-search for love. We will never lack ourselves.” — Hélène Cixous, The Newly Born Woman

“When the time comes for us to act, I cannot find you anywhere. You said we needed to take action, but now you've slipped away, leaving me to manage on my own. You said “we” but you did not mean it.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/you-co...

“But what if God himself can be simulated, that is to say can be reduced to signs that constitute faith? Then the whole system becomes weightless, it is no longer anything but a gigantic simulacrum — (1/2)

“Your intentions are not always compatible with each other. They can make demands on you that are completely at odds. Powerful tensions arise between them, fracturing you into parts.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/finding-harmony/

“In my experience, the difficulty-pleasure of writing touches every point of the body. When you’ve finished the book, it’s as if your innermost self had been ransacked, and all you want is to regain distance, return to being whole.” — Elena Ferrante, Frantumaglia

“If you can see attachment and its connection to your suffering, then you gain a chance to bring harmony to your parts. You do this by allowing all of your parts to exist without becoming attached to any of them.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/finding-ha...

“For too long it has been thought that in order to understand metaphors it is necessary to know the code (or the encyclopedia): the truth is that the metaphor is the tool that permits us to understand the encyclopedia better.” — Umberto Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language

“We don't need to force ourselves to get something out of everything we read. Reading is just like every other experience we have: we might see some meaning in it or we might not.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/chasin...

“Poetry reveals a power of the unknown. But the unknown is only an insignificant void if it is not the object of a desire. Poetry is a middle term, it conceals the known within the unknown: it is the unknown painted in blinding colors, in the image of a sun.” — Georges Bataille, The Impossible

“Awareness is not something I can delimit with language and it is often not something I can wilfully access. Awareness is instead a kind of idealized entity, a metaphor for the way attentive experience affects me throughout life.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/awaren...

“Prayer is trust, is confirmation. Whoever prays truly does not ask for anything, he merely recounts his condition and his wants, he sings forth his suffering and his thanks, as little children sing.” — Hermann Hesse, Wandering

“She now lives equally in these two different worlds. She experiences joy in reality and in her imagination. Is one kind of joy worth less than the other?” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/dreami...

“The Empire is the institution, the codification, of derangement; it is insane and imposes its insanity on us by violence, since its nature is a violent one. (1/2)