William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold
Wallace Earle Stegner On Wilderness
Wallace Earle Stegner (February 18, 1909 – April 13, 1993) Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed ... We need wilderness preserved — as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds — because it was the challenge against which …
Hermann Hesse On Solitude
Hermann Hesse (July 02, 1877 – August 09, 1962) Solitude is the path over which destiny endeavors to lead man to himself. Solitude is the path that men most fear. A path fraught with terrors, where snakes and toads lie in wait… Without solitude there is no suffering, without solitude there is no heroism. But …
Olivia Laing On Loneliness
Olivia Laing (April 14, 1977 -) You can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavour to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by millions of people. One might think this state was antithetical to urban living, to the massed presence of other human beings, and yet mere physical proximity …
Philip Milton Roth On Writing
Philip Milton Roth (March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) Writing turns you into somebody who’s always wrong. The illusion that you may get it right someday is the perversity that draws you on. What else could? As pathological phenomena go, it doesn’t completely wreck your life.
Susan Sontag On Time And Space
Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) Time exists in order that everything doesn’t happen all at once … and space exists so that it doesn’t all happen to you.
Lincoln Steffens On Knowledge
Lincoln Steffens (April 6, 1866–August 9, 1936) It is our knowledge — the things we are sure of — that makes the world go wrong and keeps us from seeing and learning.
