“Why is sociology absent in public debates … why do sociologists have so little confidence in their work that they talk about it only to each other, rather than to the world at large?”
— Wolfgang Streeck, in an essay on public sociology. Hat tip to The Sociological Imagination (in more ways than one).
“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
— Franz Kafka (via aprettywar)
(via aprettywar)
“The right poem at the right time can reveal the world in its glorious imperfection, can make it all seem manageable and sane. … Whether the world demands kite-flyers or not, they will always be there to contextualize the wind, to give dimension to the clouds, and to risk losing their fragile kites to a careless sky for nothing more than the sheer joy of watching it happen.”
—
Luke Johnson
“Write every day. Regaining momentum takes three times as much energy as sustaining momentum.”
— Daniel H. Pink
“To be a writer is to sit down at one’s desk in the chill portion of every day, and to write; not waiting for the little jet of the blue flame of genius to start from the breastbone—just plain going at it.”
— John Hersey
“The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
“Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.”
— Denis Diderot
“Don’t get it right, just get it written.”
— James Thurber
“The soul is a verb.” He impales a lit candle on a spike. “Not a noun.”
— Dr. Marinus, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (via readhard)
“Times change and forms and their meanings alter. Thus new poems are necessary. Their forms must be discovered in the living language of their day, or old forms, embodying exploded concepts, will tyrannize over the imagination.”
— William Carlos Williams
