Essays from the Nick of Time Quotes

“The case for the humanities is not hard to make, though it can be difficult--to such an extent have we been marginalized, so long have we acceded to that marginalization--not to sound either defensive or naive. The humanities, done right, are the crucible in which our evolving notions of what it means to be fully human are put to the test; they teach us, incrementally, endlessly, not what to do, but how to be. Their method is confrontational, their domain unlimited, their "product" not truth but the reasoned search for truth, their "success" something very much like Frost's momentary stay against confusion.”
― Mark Slouka, Essays from the Nick of Time: Reflections and Refutations

“History resists an ending as surely as nature abhors a vacuum; the narrative of our days is a run-on sentence, every full stop a comma in embryo. But more: like thought, like water, history is fluid, unpredictable, dangerous. It leaps and surges and doubles back, cuts unpredictable channels, surfaces suddenly in places no one would expect.”
― Mark Slouka, Essays from the Nick of Time: Reflections and Refutations

“I was raised to be ashamed of my ignorance, and to try to do something about it if at all possible.”
― Mark Slouka, Essays from the Nick of Time: Reflections and Refutations

“We're angry about this, upset about that, but who has the time to do anything anymore? There are those reports to report on, memos to remember, e-mails to deflect or delete. They bury us like snow.”
― Mark Slouka, Essays from the Nick of Time: Reflections and Refutations

“I distrust the perpetually busy, always have. The frenetic ones spinning in tight little circles like poisoned rats. The slower ones, grinding away their fourscore and ten in righteousness and pain. They are the soul-eaters.”
― Mark Slouka, Essays from the Nick of Time: Reflections and Refutations

“And yet, far off, I can hear something whispering that this compulsion to do, to intrude ourselves, to improve on what is--even when wholly well intentioned, particularly when wholly well intentioned--is the source of all our troubles.”
― Mark Slouka, Essays from the Nick of Time: Reflections and Refutations

“Pleasure and pain are immediate; knowledge, retrospective. A steel ball, suspended on a string, smacks into its brothers and nothing happens: no shock of recognition, no sudden epiphany. We go about our business, buttering the toast, choosing gray socks over brown. But here's the thing: just because we haven't understood something doesn't mean we haven't been shaped by it.”
― Mark Slouka, Essays from the Nick of Time: Reflections and Refutations

“I suspect that on some level, life is a matter of indefensible loyalties.”
― Mark Slouka, Essays from the Nick of Time: Reflections and Refutations

“There are times in every life when the past acquires a particular resonance, when we grow sensitive to sounds and voices normally beyond the range of hearing. The past shades into present always and everywhere, but only rarely do we acknowledge the process; only rarely does some trigger force us to recognize ourselves as citizens of that frontier.”
― Mark Slouka, Essays from the Nick of Time: Reflections and Refutations

“Generally speaking, writers who have been at it for a while, and who are any good at it, suffer from an acute kind of self-knowledge. The unexamined life is not a risk for them.”
― Mark Slouka, Essays from the Nick of Time: Reflections and Refutations