From The Way of Zen by Alan Watts (which I find myself re-reading and re-reading for fuller comprehension): We learn, very thoroughly though far less explicitly, to identify ourselves with an equally conventional view of "myself." For ...
From The Way of Zen by Alan Watts (which I find myself re-reading and re-reading for fuller comprehension): We learn, very thoroughly though far less explicitly, to identify ourselves with an equally conventional view of "myself." For ...
From The Way of Zen by Alan Watts: It was a basic Confucian principle that "it is man who makes truth great, not truth which makes man great." For this reason, "humanness" or "human-heartedness" was always felt to be superior ...
From "Letting Go" by Atul Gawande in The New Yorker (August 2, 2010): Almost all these patients had known, for some time, that they had a terminal condition. Yet they—along with their doctors—were unprepared for the final stage. … Surveys of patients with terminal illness find that their top priorities include, in addition to ...
From an interview with Clay Shirky over at the Barnes and Noble Review: I’ve always adopted the Bill Burroughs mantra, which is, “If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.” Which is to say that if there is any intrinsic value in writing or expressing yourself or taking a photo, it’s worth ...
As I was reading Chapter 4 of Here Comes Everybody, I was struck at how Shirky's description of the power law applies to authors who self-publish—since there is NO barrier now ...
From Bill Murray interview in Entertainment Weekly (via TerryStarbucker.com): “I just really want to work when I want to work. Life interferes, you know. When you’re young and all you have is your career, some of your life can be in second place. And then you want your life to take first ...
"People put so much effort into starting a relationship and so little effort into ending one." —Marina Abramovic I was deeply touched by a story about Marina Abramovic in this issue of The New Yorker. She and ...
From a phenomenal personal essay: "Go West" by Peter Hessler in The New Yorker (April 19, 2010). Note: All of Hessler's pieces for The New Yorker are incredible. The American appetite for loneliness impressed me, and there was something about this solitude that freed conversation. One night at a bar, I met a man, ...
Snippets from "Publish or Perish" by Ken Auletta (New Yorker, April 26, 2010). You MUST go read the full article. Excellent stats from article Independent booksellers have declined from 3,250 to 1,400 since 1999 Big Six publishers account for 60% of all ...