20 Quotes, Vol. 1
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Here are 20 quotes that either recently moved me or made me think.
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“So I made this process that I use for everything now: it’s observe, brainstorm, research, build and communicate.”
(December 2020 TIME Interview by TIME staff, with Gitanjali Rao)
I went back to read about this 15 year-old genius a month or so ago, thanks to a bookmark I left. Gitanjali Rao has made headlines before, but the fact that she has nabbed TIME’s “Kid Of The Year’’ probably means that her life has changed, for the better, forever. Angelina Jolie apparently interviewed her for TIME, where she gave this incredible quote.
She is also still trying to bring her water testing device to market, something she has been working on for several years now.
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“Using informants changes the definition of justice. It commodifies justice.”
(December 2020 The Economist article, “Too Big To Jail: The Colombian Drug Lord Who Snitched Himself To Freedom,” by Jacob Kushner and Daniel Ammann)
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“They walk the same streets but they live in parallel, non-interacting universes.”
(December 2020 post, “Nobody Says Hi In San Francisco,” by Noah Smith.)
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“Playing fair is a joke invented by rich people to keep the rest of us poor.”
(2020 film I Care A Lot)
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“The minute you get too big to mop a floor or wipe a counter, that’s the exact minute you have life fucked up.”
(2011 TMZ Article, “DMX Mopping Up Messes…At Waffle House)
RIP DMX. Like millions of others, I was a pretty big DMX fan growing up. I remember hearing a beautiful song like “Slippin” and admiring the fact that he wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable during a time where rappers were trying to avoid that at all costs. I remember watching the “What’s My Name” video and having my mind blown, when you consider that the sound and aesthetic was so different from rap music in my hometown.
This quote embodies DMX because it’s a testament to how different he was from other rappers — and even celebrities in general. His posthumous album Exodus is currently out on all platforms/DSPs: https://dmx.lnk.to/EXODUS
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“Envy is your own unlived potential projected onto another.”
(August 2020 episode, Karamo: The Podcast)
Russell Brand offers up this quote in the episode.
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“Creativity is more physical than we realize.”
(March 2021 NYTimes Interview with Riz Ahmed)
Riz Ahmed blew me away with his acting in “The Night Of”, a 2016 HBO miniseries that is actually based off of a 2008 miniseries. I would say that the series never got its just due, but I suppose that’s a bit unfair when you consider that it got 13 Emmy nominations. Either way, it was obvious to me that Ahmed would probably blow my mind, again, relatively soon.
He has done that with The Sound Of Metal recently, as well, which I should have seen much earlier. I found this quote while searching for his recent interviews about the film, as it was so impressive that I wanted to know more about his time filming it.
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“Intelligence is an imperfect science. It’s what you know, and it can change in the blink of an eye.”
(May 2021 New Yorker article, “Are U.S. Officials Under Silent Attack?, by Adam Entous”)
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“You could argue mediocrity is even aspirational — the person who doesn’t feel the need to constantly improve themselves is likely far more self-possessed and well-adjusted than the people who do.”
(May 2021 Vox article, “The Blandness Of Tiktok’s Biggest Stars”, by Rebecca Jennings )
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“What non-fungible (which is to say, unique) tokens show us, is the absolute fungibility of culture today: its hazy, interchangeable meaninglessness. How it all belongs on a blockchain. How it all belongs on an infinite self-generating playlist ouroboros. It all belongs on a streaming service that slowly steals the hours and the heartbeats from inside you.”
(May 2021 SpikeArt article, “The Downward Spiral: Popular Things,” by Dean Kissick)
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“She felt alive, and if not sexy, then sexual. The promise mattered more than the transaction.”
(2020 novel Leave The World Behind, by Rumaan Alam)
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“Expressing creativity using the most basic, accessible methods is the hardest thing to do and the purest.”
(Oct 2020 tweet from Casey Neistat)
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“Tests in school should be open book, just like real life.”
(May 2020 tweet from David Perrell)
I would love to know more about how many teachers agree vs. disagree with this take. Would this lead to a better world? Are tests outdated? The world is more “open source” than ever, so should we begin to think of tests as a way to utilize information rather than memorize it?
Follow David here, he tends to offer some pretty thought-provoking tweets from time to time.
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“Lastly, when you see black kids in the street, think of what they can be rather than what you think they are.”
(June 2020 post, “Reflections On The Color Of My Skin, by Neil Degrasse Tyson)
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“The internet facilitates these powerful, complex parasocial relationships but, at the same time flattens everything that makes the messy, human elements of relationships possible. It flattens audiences, it flattens time and it flattens a lot of nuance.”
(June 2021 article, “The Internet Is Flat,” by Charlie Warzel)
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“I feel that most of what I know about writing fiction I learned from music. For me, writing is something that passes through the body.”
(May 2021 interview, “My Conversation With Haruki Murakami Really Never Ends,” by Sean Wilsey, InsideHook)
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“Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.”
(June 2020 tweet from @NotNikyatu, quote is attributed to D.W. Winnicott)
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“But humanity, in its desire for comfort, had overreached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.”
(1909 novel The Machine Stops, by E.M. Forster)
Read that quote again, and consider that it was written over a hundred years ago.
Absolutely incredible. I’ve heard of “E.M Forster” before, and only listened to this audiobook because I saw it referenced in an article in The Conversation. It’s interesting to think about how Forster was mostly known for writing about class and society, but that he also wrote this novella that is incredibly prescient with respect to technology and loneliness.
It’s a short read, and the link above leads to a free audiobook uploaded on Youtube.
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“When liquor is consumed, it’s usually in small quantities, either right before or after a meal. Alcohol is seen as a food, not a drug. Drinking to get drunk is discouraged, as is drinking alone.”
(June 2021 article, “America Has A Drinking Problem,” by Kate Julian, The Atlantic (appears in July/August 2021 edition)
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“Pirahãs laugh about everything. They laugh at their own misfortune: when someone’s hut blows over in a rainstorm, the occupants laugh more loudly than anyone. They laugh when they catch a lot of fish. They laugh when they catch no fish. They laugh when they’re full and they laugh when they’re hungry…
(2008 novel, “Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life And Language In The Amazonian Jungle,” by Daniel Everett)
Everett is a linguistic anthropologist and he lived amongst the Piraha, an indigenous hunter-gathering people that still live in the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil. This book documents that experience.
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