Adam > Adam's Quotes

“The best arguments in the world won't change a person's mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“Consult the genius of the place in all;
That tells the waters or to rise, or fall;
Or helps th' ambitious hill the heav'ns to scale,
Or scoops in circling theatres the vale;
Calls in the country, catches opening glades,
Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades,
Now breaks, or now directs, th' intending lines;
Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs.”
― Alexander Pope

“I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam. It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind. Light, be it particle or wave, has force: you can rig a giant sail and go. The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff”
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

“My dear,
In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.
In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.
In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm.
I realized, through it all, that…
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.

Truly yours,
Albert Camus”

I like this because only one part is usually quoted but the full quote has such symmetry.”
― Albert Camus

“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
― Albert Camus

“My point is, there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“Pandemics don’t approach like wars, with the distant thud of artillery growing louder every day and flashes of bombs on the horizon. The arrive in retrospect, essentially. It’s disorienting. The pandemic is far away and then it’s all around you with seemingly no intermediate step.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“It’s shocking to wake up in one world and find yourself in another by nightfall, but the situation isn’t actually all that unusual. You wake up married, then your spouse dies over the course of the day. You wake up in peacetime and by noon your country is at war; you wake up in ignorance and by the evening it’s clear that a pandemic is already here.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“I’ve been thinking a great deal about time and motion lately, about being a still point in the ceaseless rush.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“A life lived in a simulation is still a life.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“If there’s pleasure in action, there’s peace in stillness.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“What you have to understand is that bureaucracy is an organism, and the prime goal of every organism is self-protection. Bureaucracy exists to protect itself.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“Well," he said, "I saw some things I wish I hadn't."

Understatement of the goddamned twentieth century.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“We knew it was coming and we were breezy about it.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“There is light suddenly everywhere, the light of your life speaking to you. What it tells you is almost the same as what happened.

Never mind that almost isn’t good enough; it’s all you have.”
― Alexander Chee, Edinburgh

“As I walked along that path,

I felt drawn from myself, elated,

struck stupidly good for a moment

by the extravagant beauty of the world.”
― Garth Greenwell, What Belongs to You

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.”
― Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

“A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantment of later years … the alienation from the sources of our strength.”
― Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

“it is not half so important to know as to feel”
― Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

“I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide him, it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil. Once the emotions have been aroused - a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love - then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response. Once found, it has lasting meaning. It is more important to pave the way for the child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts he is not ready to assimilate.”
― Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.”
― Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder: A Celebration of Nature for Parents and Children

“It is difficult for anyone born and raised in human infrastructure to truly internalize the fact that your view of the world is backward. Even if you fully know that you live in a natural world that existed before you and will continue long after, even if you know that the wilderness is the default state of things, and that nature is not something that only happens in carefully curated enclaves between towns, something that pops up in empty spaces if you ignore them for a while, even if you spend your whole life believing yourself to be deeply in touch with the ebb and flow, the cycle, the ecosystem as it actually is, you will still have trouble picturing an untouched world. You will still struggle to understand that human constructs are carved out and overlaid, that these are the places that are the in-between, not the other way around.”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

“To be attracted to another man in a violent place seems akin to a ticking bomb, logging, strip-mining, fracking. The American West is the playground for the country’s obsession with exploitation and destruction, with most extractive economies near Native American reservations. There are increased rates of birth defects. Higher rates of cancer. Violent people who mimic the violence done to the land. BOOM. And where there’s danger, there’s room for trespassing. And where there’s trespassing, there’s room for mischief.”
― Taylor Brorby, Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land

“The prairie I grew up on teaches you to notice, to pay attention. The yolk of the sun as it slides across the dome of the sky streaking the world orange and indigo. The swish of grass in afternoon breeze. The screech of a grackle. During the Golden hour on the prairie, the North Dakota palette reveals the subtle differences between ochre, umber, and sienna.”
― Taylor Brorby, Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land

“I mentioned how I had lived in the oil boom. I described the buttes of the badlands. The smell of the sage. The yolk-yellow breasts of the sage grass. How if you sat long enough, waited for the golden hour, then the entire sweep of the badlands surged into a riot of reds and purples and golds. I told him how there were ponderosa pines tucked into the southwestern pocket of North Dakota, but that they looked shrimpy compared to the ones here, in the rain-forest of the Olympics.”
― Taylor Brorby, Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land

“I wanted to be that open with others. Be able to express myself without fear. Spare emotions fester in a landscape where the only way capitalism has made sense of the American West is to fence it in. Break it into 160-acre parcels. Frack, mine, dam, and cut it to a stubble.”
― Taylor Brorby, Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land

“My grip loosened on the wheel. Or was it, the world?

It was such a small, passing moment. Which is where many of our monumental shifts happen. It is not the grand stage, but the quiet kitchen, the silent dining room, the bedrooms, the drives home, where gayness, my gayness, reveals itself.

Drag shows are spectacles. Television shows provide a comforting illusion that life progresses. That we no longer need to live in fear. But we do. We do live in fear.”
― Taylor Brorby, Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land

“The American West is the playground for the country's obsession with exploitation and destruction, with most extractive economies near Native American reservations. There are increased rates of birth defects, higher rates of cancer. Violent people who mimc the violence done to the land.”
― Taylor Brorby, Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land

“These are among the many foundation stones of this new world we have built, and the work continues. I know all this seemed impossible a decade ago, when it felt as if everything was falling apart and our climate might be doomed. But everything we did mattered. All of it.

We now know that we're going to keep global temperature rise below the most dangerous tipping points that climate scientists warned us about a decade ago. We can look our kids in the eye and tell them we didn't let them down. Now we can watch their dreams unfold.”
― Mary Anne Hitt

“These are among the many foundation stones of this new world we have built, and the work continues. I know all this seemed impossible a decade ago, when it felt as if everything was falling apart and our climate might be doomed. But everything we did mattered. All of it.

We now know that we're going to keep global temperature rise below the most dangerous tipping points that climate scientists warned us about a decade ago. We can look our kids in the eye and tell them we didn't let them down. Now we can watch their dreams unfold."

— Mary Anne Hitt, "A Love Letter from the Clean Energy Future”
― Rebecca Solnit, Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility