"Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better"
-Epictetus
short stories, thoughts, & essays (work-in-progress)
Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
In Other Words
I believe that what can change our life is always outside of us
When you're in love, you want to live forever. You want the emotion, the excitement you feel to last.
When I cant remember words, I fear I've abandoned them
Although defeated, I dont feel too discouraged. If anything I feel more determined. The next day I return to the woods...I know that it's beauty lies in the act of gathering, not in the results.
I start with short pieces, usually no more than a handwritten page...try to focus on something specific: a person, a moment, a place...such fragments are the first steps to take before constructing a story.
A writer should observe the real world before constructing a nonexistent one
Maybe because from the creative point of view there is nothing so dangerous as security
I live in an era in which almost anything seems possible, in which no one wants to accept any limits...we can send a message in an instant, we can go from one end of the world to the other in a day, we can plainly see a person who is not with us...yet this Italian project of mine makes me acutely aware of the immense distances between languages.
Imperfection inspires invention, imagination, creativity
I'm a writer: I identify myself completely with language...when I write, my appearance, my name have nothing to do with it. Iam heard without being seen...I am invisible. I become my words, and the words become me
Every individual...is nothing but a series of changes, at times subtle, at times deep...The moments of transition, in which something changes, constitute the backbone of all of us...They give a structure to our existence...Caterpillar is transformed into a butterfly it's no longer a caterpillar but a butterfly...metamorphosis is radical, permanent.
The power of art is the power to wake us up, strike us at our depths, change us...we are searching, through a work of art, for something that alters us.
The most important thing I needed to hear: keep going.
Author: Tim O'Brien
The Things They Carried
In some respects, though not many, the waiting was worse than the tunnel itself. Imagination was a killer.
It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do.
His obligation was not to be loved but to lead
Checkers...there was something restful about it, something orderly and reassuring...The playing field was laid out in a strict grid, no tunnels or mountains or jungles. You knew where you stood. You knew the score. The pieces were out on the board, the enemy was visible, you could watch the tactics unfolding into larger strategies. There was a winner and a loser. There were rules.
A true war story is never moral.
That proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life. After a firefight, there is always the immense pleasure of aliveness.
You don't try to scare people in broad daylight. You wait. Because the darkness squeezes you inside yourself, you get cut off from the outside world, the imagination takes over.