“I need to recognize that all of the norms and rules I support are contingent entities. They might be more just or more rational than the norms of others but they are still only conventions and not ultimate truths.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/harsh-...

“Deconstruction is not an analysis, because the analytical fallout is not simpler and more fundamental than what is analyzed; deconstruction is an unpacking of meanings that, rather, problematize.” — Samuel R. Delany, “Neither the First Word nor the Last on Deconstruction…”

“She decided to stop thinking and listen to herself. But she heard nothing. Nothing seemed to be alive inside her. Nothing was offering anything for her to say.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/a-more...

“The old style of interpretation was insistent, but respectful; it erected another meaning on top of the literal one. The modern style of interpretation excavates, and as it excavates, destroys; it digs “behind” the text, to find a subtext which is the true one.” — Susan Sontag

“In order to loosen an attachment, you first need to be able to see it. If you can see it, you can also see past it, towards the possibility of being free of it.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/beyond...

“What within truth is merely truth falls foul of illusion. What within truth exceeds truth is of the order of a higher illusion. Only what exceeds reality can go beyond the illusion of reality.” — Jean Baudrillard, The Perfect Crime

“To use skepticism as a justification for nihilism is absurd. For all that skepticism can do is to show us that everything is ultimately uncertain and there are no foundations to our knowledge. The conclusion is not that there is no value but that we cannot be certain of value.” Read more:

“By making everything worthless, nihilism gives us the strange comfort of knowing that nothing we do can possibly matter. Freedom from meaning is also freedom from responsibility, and in this there can be a kind of morbid excitement.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/nihilism-i...

“My encounters with books I regard very much as my encounters with other phenomena of life or thought. All encounters are configurate, not isolate. In this sense, and in this sense only, books are as much a part of life as trees, stars or dung. I have no reverence for them per se.” — Henry Miller

“A fragment always has two authors: the one who writes and the one who reads. What the fragment says is always partly a reflection of yourself. But what it reflects is not always what you expect, and it might even be something intolerable.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/fillin...

“I will talk about truth again, without which (without the word truth, without the mystery truth) there would be no writing. It is what writing wants. But it (the truth) is totally down below and a long way off.” — Hélène Cixous, Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing

“Unquenchable desire transforms into a thirst for power, and power constructs harmful hierarchies of dominance and oppression.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/the-ro...

“It has been said that a specialist is a barbarian whose ignorance is not well-rounded.” — Stanisław Lem, His Master’s Voice

“You're so in your head that you've stopped seeing the world around you, the world of other people, people like me. You're folding in on yourself, gradually closing down, and there looks to be no end to the process.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/foldin...

“Yes, what I’m writing you is nobody’s. And this nobody’s freedom is very dangerous. It is like the infinite that has the color of air.” — Clarice Lispector, Água Viva

“Intuitions and feelings can temporarily alter the shape of your perspective, but they are not as stable or dominating as your attachments. The world is always the world as you see it, so the world is always showing you the structure of your own attachments.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/the-wo...

“Something in the question necessarily exceeds the power of questioning; but this does not mean that there are too many secrets in the world that provoke questions: it is rather the contrary. […] In the profound question, impossibility questions.” — Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation

“Compassion is always freely given when need is seen. It requires no merit, as it is neither a reward nor a punishment. It is, in fact, entirely orthogonal to the concept of deserving.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/what-w...

“To see the world as possibility is to see yourself as possibility. So much is possible for you in this moment and in every moment. Freedom is possible, creativity is possible, joy is possible.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/what-we-de...

“We go to great lengths to disguise our misery. We are suffering deeply inside, but we do not want to see it or let it be seen. We try to hide it, not just from others, but also from ourselves.”

“Rules and systems are the creations of human beings. They have force only as long as people agree to follow and uphold them. Beyond this, they are literally nothing. Rules can be changed when needed and, in fact, often do change as we learn more about ourselves and the world.”

“The more we use language, the more we find ourselves trapped inside it, unable to find the words to express what we want to say and unable to communicate our meaning to others. To escape this prison, we write poems — tricks of language that indicate the thing in question without ever naming it.”

“Everything seems to be pushing you towards conformity. Bribing you to take the path of least resistance. Asking you to accept the world just as it is. Everyone tells you that if you just go along with the way they do things, then you'll have a happy and pleasant life.”

“Language is based on agreement. You and I can communicate only insofar as we agree on the meanings of the words we use. If I use a word that has no recognizable meaning for you, then I will not communicate anything at all, since for you it will be literal nonsense.”

“We become so focused on measuring and optimizing, on increasing efficiency and productivity, that we stop thinking about what is happening to us in our day-to-day lives. It is perhaps not surprising that we then feel there is something missing—as though life is not going as well as it ought to be…”

“When wrongdoing happens, there is almost never only one person at fault. Responsibility is rarely singular and rarely clear. Part of being responsible is recognizing this lack of clarity.”

“The task of creation is always unfinished. From every newly crafted thing, a new arrangement of meanings emerges, and from that, new possibilities appear. New possibilities beget new questions, and something further must be created in response.”

“We can be physically stationary and still moving. Sitting in quiet reflection does not mean you are not moving. Real movement is change. It is vital, it is transformational, and it means growth. False movement is repetition. It is mechanical, it is sameness, and it means stagnation.”

“If I rush to judge everything I see, then I cut myself off from the opportunity to experience it fully. I have to open myself up and allow everything in as it is. I have to be sensitive to nuances and complexities. I have to allow myself to see even those things I judge to be bad or wrong or ugly.”

“A language without rules could not communicate anything at all. It is because you and I agree on the rules of grammar that you can read this sentence and it has a meaning for you.”

“You obscure your “I” by speaking in a voice that pretends to come from nowhere. “The sky is blue,” you say. There is no “I” here. Your sentence claims to report an observation about the world with no reference to an observer.”

“An artwork usually does not come with an announcement or declaration that it is complete. The audience assumes the work must be complete because it is on display. But what if someone were to show a work that was purposely unfinished?”

“The most important thing is not to give up. You have to keep observing, absorbing everything that happens, leaving nothing out. You have to keep asking questions and pushing your investigation of yourself and the world further, without end.”

“Remembering is like constructing and then traveling again through a space. We are already talking about architecture. Memories are built as a city is built.” — Umberto Eco, "Architecture and Memory"

“Our new awareness reveals that the distinctions between living beings are not nearly as clear or final as they might seem. The suffering that exists in others is also our suffering, and it can cause us to feel just as much anguish as our own attachments.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/the-ne...

“I truly cannot understand the language of my former heart. Who was that person? Petulant, hardly aware … not yet conscious of the transformation she had already undergone. (1/2)

“Art shows us possibilities — ways of being and feeling and living that are different from our own. It shows us through photographs and films, through plays and performances, through songs and poetry. It shows us that it's possible for us to be and say and do things we did not think achievable.”

“The divine eternal fullness of life can be gained only by those who have deliberately lost the partial, separative life of craving and self-interest, of egocentric thinking, feeling, wishing and acting.” — Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy

“He wants precision. He wants control. He wants to function in way that is both reliable and efficient, in a way that produces guaranteed results. He wants to become a machine.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/to-bec...

“The pleasure of the text is that moment when my body pursues its own ideas — for my body does not have the same ideas as I do.” — Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

“To learn, I have to allow the text to operate on me, not merely as an instrument of language and reason, but as a record of human experience. I have to investigate the experience the text describes and consider whether I might have experienced something similar.” Read more:

“The moral pleasure peculiar to art is not the pleasure of approving of acts or disapproving of them. The moral pleasure in art, as well as the moral service that art performs, consists in the intelligent gratification of consciousness.” — Susan Sontag, “On Style”

“We judge the world differently because our values differ. What's good for me might not be good for you. Still, there are always places where our values overlap, and this is also where our realities overlap. It is here that we must work on finding common ground.” Read more:

“If we cannot even agree on what is a fact or what is true, then we might not be able to make any progress. Here, it can feel like we're living in two different realities. It can feel like I cannot bring you to see the world as I do and you cannot bring me to see it as you do.” Read more:

“I could go on and on like this for hours, talking about every imaginable aspect of my experience, and still I would never fully describe the experience itself. An unlimited number of words in any combination would still fail to capture the whole of it.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/the-li...

“Surely every one realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he has chosen. What stays him, usually, is the fear of the sacrifices involved. (1/2)

“To break free from our attachments to distinction and permanence is to see these features of our experience as no more or less real than their opposites. It is to accept that our experience is profoundly paradoxical and contradictory in all of its facets.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/two-il...

“This world wants to be childish in order to make us believe that the adults are elsewhere, in the “real” world, and to conceal the fact that true childishness is everywhere (1/2)

“To settle is not the worst thing, she thinks. The worst thing would be to abandon her ideals entirely. To stop working towards something better just because she knows she isn't likely to get all the way there.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/never-...

“And I? I drink, I burn, I gather dreams. And sometimes I tell a story. Because Promethea asks me for a bowl of words before she goes to sleep.” — Hélène Cixous, The Book of Promethea