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How easy... to mistake clear reasoning for correct reasoning!

Frank Herbert, Dune: Messiah

[hope-for-the-planet]

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”

— Rabbi Tarfon

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Babel, R.F. Kuang

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Bunny by Mona Awad

[kitchen-light]

“The fact that erotic attraction in Austen’s work is forced out of language—sublimated into ambiguous gestures and looks and seemingly innocuous speech acts—constitutes in very large part the drama of her narratives. In a sense, then, it is from the unavailability of language that the tensions of the novel arise. We might propose the novel as a kind of book in which the most important subject cannot be spoken about. The genius of Jane Austen’s technical achievement is apparent not only in her wide readership but in her formal legacy. Austen’s narrative structures, her command of pacing, her perspectival techniques, her staging of small knowable social worlds: these are the basic ingredients of what we would now call the novel as a form.”

— Sally Rooney, from her essay/lecture “Misreading Ulysses”, published in The Paris Review, December 7, 2022

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u/mtnmadness84 in a r/CPTSD thread

[cowboydrag]

If you know where a story is going, don’t hoard it. Make the story go there, now. But then what? What will you do next? You’ve surrendered your big reveal. Exactly. Often, in our doubt that we have a real story to tell, we hold something back, fearing that we don’t have anything else. And this can be a form of trickery. Surrendering that thing is a leap of faith that forces the story to attention, saying to it, in effect, “You have to do better than that, and now that I’ve denied you your trick, your first-order solution, I know that you will.”

george saunders, a swim in a pond in the rain

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"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much."

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

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"Because we don’t get to choose who our words and behavior affect, we are obligated to choose them carefully."

Jennifer Coates

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Jennifer Coates

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"He waved his baton at them amiably, eyeing the litter of unwashed cups... ."

J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World. Emphasis mine.

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"Logically - for what had a more gloomy prognosis than life? - every morning one should say to one's friends: 'I grieve for your irrevocable death,' as to anyone suffering from an incurable disease... ."

J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World

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"Each one of us is as old as the entire biological kingdom, and our bloodstreams are tributaries of the great sea of its total memory."

J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World

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He was clean-shaven and thin - thin enough that his bare chest didn't make you think of nakedness.

“The Long Net” by Anna Solomon

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"When they behave properly, you will say there is no problem. When they complain loudly, you will say they cause their own problems with their impropriety. And when they are driven to extremes, you say you will not reward such actions. What will it take for you to listen?"

Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie

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Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie

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Dune, Frank Herbert