Boxes

"I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it."

Terry Pratchett

The Power of the Written Word

"At first glance, reading is a waste of time, turning us all into versions of Don Quixote, too befuddled by our imaginations to tell windmills from giants. We would be better off spending the time mating and farming."

D.T. Max

Longing

"There are times when a feeling of expectancy comes to me, as if something is there, beneath the surface of my understanding, waiting for me to grasp it. It is the same tantalizing sensation when you almost remember a name, but don't quite reach it. I can feel it when I think of human beings, of the hints of evolution suggested by the removal of wisdom teeth, the narrowing of the jaw no longer needed to chew such roughage as it was accustomed to; the gradual disappearance of hair from the human body; the adjustment of the human eye to the fine print, the swift, colored motion of the twentieth century. The feeling comes, vague and nebulous, when I consider the prolonged adolesence of our species; the rites of birth, marriage and death; all the primitive, barbaric ceremonies streamlined to modern times. Almost, I think, the unreasoning, bestial purity was best. Oh, something is there, waiting for me. Perhaps someday the revelation will burst in upon me and I will see the other side of this monumental grotesque joke. And then I'll laugh. And then I'll know what life is."

Sylvia Plath

"The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die."

Kierkegaard, 1845

Imagination

Each day forces us
to totter on planks we hope
will become bridges.

Kevin Hart, Australian poet

Interconnectedness

"I cannot be me without you
and we cannot be us without them,
and together we have a future."

Philip Carter, Anglican priest, director of the Julian Centre in Adelaide, Australia.

"Common humanity and universal responsibility link us. But much of the time we act as if this is not the case -- we are in denial as individuals and societies."

Margaret Somerville, The Ethical Imagination, 2006.