Uncanny and Improbable Events Quotes

“contrary to what I might like to think, my life is not guided by reason; it is ruled, rather, by the inertia of habitual motion.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Uncanny and Improbable Events

“Unlikely though it may seem today, the nineteenth century was indeed a time when it was assumed, in both fiction and geology, that Nature was moderate and orderly: this was a distinctive mark of a new and ‘modern’ worldview.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Uncanny and Improbable Events

“For instance: if contemporary trends in architecture, even in this period of accelerating carbon emissions, favor shiny, glass-and-metal-plated towers, do we not have to ask, What are the patterns of desire that are fed by these gestures? If I, as a novelist, choose to use brand names as elements in the depiction of character, do I not need to ask myself about the degree to which this makes me complicit in the manipulations of the marketplace?”
― Amitav Ghosh, Uncanny and Improbable Events

“Indeed, this is perhaps the most important question ever to confront culture in the broadest sense – for let us make no mistake: the climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus of the imagination. Culture generates desires – for vehicles and appliances, for certain kinds of gardens and dwellings – that are among the principal drivers of the carbon economy.”
― Amitav Ghosh, Uncanny and Improbable Events