“Echoes, shadows, inversions, fragments — this much writing can do. But the whole enchilada lives on a different plane.” — Zadie Smith, “The I Who Is Not Me”

“To see that everything you experience is both a part of you and not you at all is what it means to be empty. When you are empty, you are free. You allow everything to arise and depart in its own time.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/being-empt...

“If only some eternal book existed, primed for our enjoyment and whims, no less inventive in the populous morning as in the secluded night, oriented toward all hours of the world. Your favorite books, reader, are like the rough drafts of that book without a final reading.” — Jorge Luis Borges

“Criticism always adds and never subtracts. It is itself a kind of creative practice, and every critique is also its own creation.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/critic...

“We have lost all sense of living normally, simply, directly. To get back to that normality, that simplicity, that directness, you cannot follow methods, you cannot merely become automatic machines... (1/2)

“Where there is still room for awareness to grow, there is also room for suffering to arise again from attachment.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/despis...

“Ordinarily we value a work of art because of the seriousness and dignity of what it achieves. … But there are other creative sensibilities besides the seriousness (both tragic and comic) of high culture and of the high style of evaluating people. (1/2)

“She knows she can't do everything. She isn't asking for supernatural powers. What bothers her is the imposed requirement to exclude. She doesn't want to abandon things or people. She wants to stay open to everything that might be possible for her.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/tired-...

“To be scrupulous. Reject everything about the real that does not become true. (The dreadful reality of the false.)” — Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematograph

“The problem is that we cannot see why the other ought to receive compassion. We are unable to see them as one of us, so they remain an other, an outsider not entitled to anything.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/how-we...

“Narrative exists as an extraordinary complex of expectations. … The sense of expectations violated can be just as pleasurable, or even more so, than the sense of expectations fulfilled.” — Samuel R. Delany, “Some Remarks on Narrative and Technology”

“Greater awareness necessarily means greater compassion, and compassion demands action. To act from compassion is to use every last tool in whatever ways it must be used to meet needs and reduce suffering.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/every-...

“I think that knowledge enslaves us, that at the base of all knowledge there is a servility, the acceptation of a way of life wherein each moment has meaning only in relation to another or others that will follow it.” — Georges Bataille, The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge

“That so many are struggling with unmet needs means that significant changes are required. Changes not just to individuals but also to the systems we have constructed that actively work against compassion.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/every-last...

“All narratives were inevitably the work of narrators, male or female, who by nature, by form, could be only a fragment among fragments of reality...” — Elena Ferrante, In the Margins

“Suffering is present because I'm attached to something. It might be a desire for success, an aversion to a dreadful outcome, or a belief about what I'm supposed to do. All of these intentions are similar in terms of the suffering they can produce through attachment.” suliqyre.com/posts/stress...

“The imperfect is the tense of fascination: it seems to be alive and yet it doesn’t move: imperfect presence, imperfect death; neither oblivion nor resurrection; simply the exhausting lure of memory.” — Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse

“The artist is, of course, accustomed to taking risks. Everything they make is a risk, for there is no way of knowing whether or not their creation will be any good before it is complete, and no way of being certain that others will appreciate it once it is.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/outrag...

“God is not Time; God generates or urges all things into development that the plan completes itself in continual creation. All we know is that things happen. (1/2)

“I thought I was being told something that had actually happened when in fact it was a fabrication... But then I wondered if this meant anything in the end. The truth of what had been shown had not changed. It was true in the way all fiction is true.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/true-t...

“The need to belong is not just a product of weakness and a need to join forces with something or someone stronger than myself. Often the intense desire to belong has its roots in my own strength — (1/2)

“A human being is always partial, always pulled in some dominant direction, because their awareness is incomplete. The inevitable result is that attachments form and suffering is produced.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/total-...

“At the moment when desire ceases and contemplation, pure seeing, and self-surrender begin, everything changes. … For indeed contemplation is not scrutiny or criticism, it is nothing but love. It is the highest and most desirable state of our souls: undemanding love.” — Hermann Hesse

“If you were told that you cannot alter what is required and you must do exactly this, you would shift to denial. You'd declare that you don't actually need to do it. You'd assert that you are the master of your own life. You'd proclaim that you make your own choices.” suliqyre.com/posts/what-y...

“In the end, you're right about at least one thing: no one can tell you what to do. Only you can see for yourself what you must do. Only then will you be willing to take it on as your own personal necessity.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/what-you-m...

“In short, the medium is the message signifies not only the end of the message, but also the end of the medium. There are no longer media in the literal sense of the term … (1/2)

“To write for the future is to write for a form of life that does not yet exist. We have to imagine what the cultural and linguistic norms of the future might be like.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/the-wr...

“We write stories about imaginary people in imaginary situations. Then we publish them (because they are, in their strange way, acts of communication — addressed to others). And then people read them and call up and say, But who are you? Tell us about yourself! (1/2)

“A desire might even feel more compelling than a need, because it is definite, clear, and tells me exactly what to do. I like the certainty the desire provides, so I give myself over to it and I allow it to take control.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/desire...

“Everything she is to him could never be reduced to mere reasons. It could never be captured by words, not in this language or in any language. There is always more to his love, always something beyond what he could say.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/unjust...

“In television, images are projected at you. You are the screen. The images wrap around you. You are the vanishing point.” — Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage (with Quentin Fiore)

“We hate the possibility of not understanding because it seems to suggest there are parts of the world that are somehow beyond us. We might even feel like we are being kept from learning a secret that everyone else knows.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/to-not...

“To be able really to listen, one should abandon or put aside all prejudices, preformulations, and daily activities. When you are in a receptive state of mind, things can be easily understood; you are listening when your real attention is given to something.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti, Total Freedom

“To be able to meet our many needs, we have to allow ourselves freedom from our intentions, not by ignoring them or fighting them, but by seeing clearly how they produce suffering through attachment.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/the-hu...

“Reflective consciousness is not just powerful, it is a superpower, and as such, it is challenging to wield. Its power can easily overwhelm us and our entire lives can be taken over by its unrelenting judgments.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/the-human-...

“Though reading may not at first blush seem like an act of creation, in a deep sense it is. Without the enthusiastic reader, who is really the author’s counterpart and very often his most secret rival, a book would die.” — Henry Miller, The Books in My Life

“Having discovered value, the artist feels deeply that it must be shared and seen. Keeping this gem private would not be to gain something but to suffer a terrible loss.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/what-m...

“Beauty is, in some way, boring. Even if its concept changes through the ages … a beautiful object must always follow certain rules. A beautiful nose shouldn’t be longer than that or shorter than that, on the contrary, an ugly nose can be as long as the one of Pinocchio, (1/2)

“I need to argue for the truth carefully, because I risk accidentally defeating myself. Provocative declarations of victory will not change anyone's mind. Heavy-handed arguments will not encourage the kind of calm reflection that shifts judgments.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/effect...

“What animates the novel is something wholly missing from these older narrative forms: the discovery of psychology, the transposition of motives into “experiences.” This passion for the documentation of “experience,” for facts, made the novel the most open of all art forms.” — Susan Sontag

“But when there is romance everything changes. Romance means tension between two living beings, each pulling the other in its own way, each striving for the life it desperately wants. The intricacy of the tension means that something new and exciting is always happening.” Read more:

“I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.” — Georges Bataille, The Deadman

“To act from compassion does not require us to change our intentions, but only to allow ourselves adequate distance from them. Our intentions can then exist freely as the future-oriented entities they are, while we ourselves exist wholly in the present.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/intend...

“I don’t have a word to say. So why don’t I shut up? But if I do not force out the word muteness will swallow me forever in waves. Word and form will be the board upon which I float atop billows of muteness.” — Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G. H.

“We think that the only way to be happy is to amass resources, just like those with power over us. The result is that we build a culture of withholding, of always holding back, out of the relentless worry that we won't have enough to get what we want.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/a-cult...

“Acting from compassion, we might not get what we want, but we do get what we need. Our culture is then transformed from one of withholding to one of giving.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/a-culture-...

“Languages change—and the language of fiction changes as well. What was perceived as a violation yesterday is a sedimented expectation today. What was once an expectation is now to be honored only in the breach—or people will just giggle.” — Samuel R. Delany, “The Black Leather in Color Interview”

“It is by acting and failing that my awareness quickly expands. This is why I must take action, even though I know my awareness is incomplete. I cannot allow the chance of failure to paralyze me and inhibit the possibility that my actions will succeed.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/imperf...

“We draw ever closer to the surface of the screen; our gaze is, as it were, strewn across the image. We no longer have the spectator’s distance from the stage — all theatrical conventions are gone. (1/2)

“There is always more for us to see, and everything we believe could change in the future. This means we need to treat every text we read as open-ended, especially those that supply the conclusions we most desire.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/desire...