"Pippi represents my own childish longing to meet a person who has power but does not abuse it." - Astrid Lindgren, creator of Pippi Longstocking

IMAGINE UPWARDS Happening tonight in Montreal radicalcut.blogspot.com/2026/05/imag...

"Did you ever read my words, or did you merely finger through them for quotations which you thought might valuably support an already conceived idea concerning some old and distorted connection between us?" – Audre Lorde, Letter to Mary Daly

"Once in a while I catch myself wondering whether I would have found the courage to write if I had not started to write when I was too young to know what was good for me." - Ama Ata Aidoo, To Be a Woman

"There will always be enemies. Time to stop being your own." - Larry Kramer

We were trying to make a very public society, but no one paid attention, so it ended up being a secret society.

"If you are a billionaire it is because you have done evil in the world. You have exploited and caused untold misery. You have bent laws and governments to your will." radicalcut.blogspot.com/2026/05/ten-...

"Everyone says it’s so healthy to have friends, she writes to me, but I find it sometimes more isolating. The self-harm of social media – we both understand it and yet feel compelled by it, these pictures and narratives of success and happiness, however fictional." - Kate Zambreno, Drifts

Being artistically blocked by the desire to be more successful.

I often think of this meme I once saw on the internet: “Everything happens for a reason. But sometimes the reason is you’re stupid and make bad decisions.”

Thinking about how my novel Rich and Poor came out in 2016, which is now ten years ago. (And, thanks to Luigi Mangione, it has even started selling again.) radicalcut.blogspot.com/2026/05/ten-...

“There is nothing more alienating than having your pleasures disputed by someone with a theory.” - Lauren Berlant, Desire/Love

"I’ve fallen out of masculinity, but I never landed, just falling forever." - Jackie Ess, Darryl

“AI is seductive as hell” “spellcheck is really hot” “I am uncontrollably sexually attracted to autocomplete”

Oliver Fugler: “Many of our biggest blunders have occurred when trying to keep pace with the industry, when applying pressure that one or many of us can’t bear.” radicalcut.blogspot.com/2026/05/oliv...

"Anger is a wonderful emotion… if you know how to use it." - Larry Kramer

"I can assure you that history reveals that people have never, in any age of the human past, ever known what they were doing, that is, what the effects would be of what they were doing." - Marshall McLuhan

"I am not myself with people […] but am I myself when alone? That seems unlikely, too." – Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

Some passages from We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice by Mariame Kaba: radicalcut.blogspot.com/2021/12/some...

It's not enough to be a snake oil salesman. You also have to know exactly what kind of snake oil you're selling.

Whenever there's good news my first thought is to wonder whether it's actually bad news in disguise.

“I have always felt that I’m like a clown and that my life might work out like a tragedy, a clown’s tragedy.” ― Franz Kline

Oliver Fugler: “We are here, rather, to care about and for each other, and if it takes time and resources and adjustments, that’s not a barrier but rather the conditions that we must lovingly meet in order to live.” radicalcut.blogspot.com/2026/05/oliv...

"Where’s reality, I want to change it." - Isabel Waidner, We Are Made Of Diamond Stuff

I don’t completely understand why this is, but my experience has been that if you’re doing people favors, the smaller the favor the more they appreciate it.

Very intense feelings of failure have somehow always been at the centre of my artistic life.

Your semi-regular reminder that I have a new book out. The title is Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim. It's a different kind of anti-war novel, and I find myself wishing it wasn't quite so relevant at this particular moment: radicalcut.blogspot.com/2024/11/some...

The road to good reviews is paved with bad reviews.

"As it seems to me now, in my vacillation to play Hamlet, I may have succeeded at playing him after all." - S. D. Chrostowska, Permission

“What is history but fossilized gossip?” - Dodie Bellamy, Body Language

Me reading from my book Authenticity is a Feeling and answering a few questions about it: youtu.be/Qz5gGUshwco?...

People always say they want something different. But then when you give them something different they’re like: no, I don’t want that.

I'm very excited to be part of IMAGINE UPWARDS Performance Evening and Party with the CCOV radicalcut.blogspot.com/2026/05/imag...

The runner's high, the flâneur's low.

“I began to write fiction on the assumption that the true enemies of the novel were plot, character, setting and theme” - John Hawkes

The more talented you are at writing, the greater your ability for sophistry, the more you are able to convince people what you’re writing is true, the greater the responsibility.

“The poetry I love is the poetry people say isn’t poetry. It’s usually the universal things I don’t relate to at all. Any honest description of survival isn’t inspirational, it’s frightening.” – Nate Lippens, Ripcord

People often ask me about the title of my book Polyamorous Love Song. The following is a short excerpt from the final chapter in which I explain it: radicalcut.blogspot.com/2016/12/exce...

Good at art, bad at life.

"How fragile we are, between the few good moments." - Jane Hirshfield

"…our criminal legal system makes it harder for people to be employed, while knowing full well that unemployment is directly correlated to crime." - Hugh Ryan, The Women’s House of Detention

"A constructive politics pursues specific goals or end results, rather than aiming to avoid “complicity” in injustices that we assume will mostly persist anyway." - Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Elite Capture

“Listen, you money-plated bastards. When I shout love, I mean your destruction.” - Milton Acorn

"The artists I work with turn to emotion because this is where ideology does its most devastating work." – Jennifer Doyle, Hold It Against Me

1/3 "Everything seems like a car speeding off a cliff, with no driver and no brakes. But, then again, the problem is that it doesn’t feel like this nearly enough, or for enough people, that we won’t properly feel it until we’ve sped stupidly past the point of no return."

"And what if you really do belong in the world after all and the prophecy is wrong that says you must lose your soul? Why should you lose your soul? Why does so much horror lie upon you? Why don't you give up and live?" - Carolivia Herron, Thereafter Johnnie

Some passages from Afternoon Hours of a Hermit by Patrick Cottrell: radicalcut.blogspot.com/2026/05/some...

"But part of it is that if you are really committed to working collectively you have to give up some of your preciousness around style." – Fred Moten and Stefano Harney

“I was ecstatic with joy whenever I had the opportunity to overhear what people said about me as if I weren’t there.” ― Patrick Cottrell, Afternoon Hours of a Hermit

Thirteen quotations on loneliness: radicalcut.blogspot.com/2015/09/eigh...