There are some incidents that create a hinge in your existence. They are so big that everything that happens before leads up to it, and everything that happens afterwards leads away from it. Those instants stop time, and it feels like time isn’t linear, everything stems from around it. And when you have an incident like that, very shocking, it does enter your DNA. It’s not something that you forget and remember, it becomes part of you. And obviously for people who are caught up in very serious incidents like these, that can be horrendous because a lot of people don’t want to be the new person they have become after the incident. They want their old lives back.
Most of us have experienced a kind of breakthrough moment recently that, if only for a fleeting second, felt like normality wasn’t too far out of reach. It’s not necessarily a grand event, a huge party, or a trip abroad, but more likely a walk home from a pub or nightclub, a quick tube journey across town to an impromptu dinner, or even a ride in the back of a cab through traffic-jammed streets. It’s not something that feels remarkable in and of itself, but instead, it’s the collective trickle of these little routines and rituals that offer a feeling of contentment, a reminder of what once was and what will continue to be.
— “Kurt Geiger’s Love Letter to London Spirit” by Ryan White
At my ripe old age, I should be able to pass on some advice. But I’m stumped. The world is moving so fast, tomorrow is so different from today. Experience is not necessarily the help it used to be, problems need to be approached differently and this gives you an unprecedented advantage. Be bold, be radical. The world needs radicals.
Feminism is supposed to ease some of the dissonance between what women want and what they feel they’re supposed to want.
Saul Bellow recognised that rejections are not necessarily a bad thing. It is within your power to choose whether they signal the beginning or the end of a career. As he wrote: ‘They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts: ‘To hell with you.’’
And then I realized, every time you think to yourself, “I’m scared to say that,” that’s the thing you have to write about.
That should be a goal on both sides, to make someone feel special. Let’s not have a competition to see who can care less and who’s gonna text back after more time has passed. All this hedging that people do over dating apps is so tiresome to me. They bend over backward to say, “I didn’t mean to say I cared about you!” What’s wrong with caring about somebody? You don’t have to marry them. But just, like, could you just care a little bit?
SoulCycle was never built to be for the masses. Keeping people out was, it seems, just as important to the business as loyal riders. The bigger SoulCycle got, the less desirable it became. The less desirable it became, the less people had tolerance for the culture it fostered. The minute the company became mainstream, the magic dissolved. It’s impossible to scale exclusivity.
You either get bitter or you get better. It’s that simple. You either take what has been done to you and allow it to make you a better person, or you allow it to tear you down. The choice does not belong to fate, it belongs to you.
— Josh Shipp
Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real.
— Nora Ephron
The best writing you can do is the writing you can’t not do. You have to tell the story that is bursting to be told.
What people want to know is are you confident, are you in control and what is your vision?
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
— Plato
If you’re not door-knocking, if you’re not on the internet, if your main points of reliance are TV and mail, then you’re not running a campaign on all cylinders. I just don’t see how anyone could be making ideological claims when they didn’t run a full-fledged campaign. Our party isn’t even online, not in a real way that exhibits competence. And so, yeah, they were vulnerable to these messages, because they weren’t even on the mediums where these messages were most potent.
— AOC
Darling, you knocked and knocked, and when your knocking drowned out all other sounds, I made a door the best way I knew how and opened it.