"We need, in short, to challenge the presumption that the work-dominated, stressed-out, time-scarce and materially encumbered affluence of today is advancing human well-being rather than being detrimental to it." 

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Post-Growth Living: For an Alternative Hedonism by Kate Soper

 

"Is it an obsession? Yes, it is clearly an obsession. But not only that, she thinks. It's a rapture, a metamorphosis, a radical transformation of the predictable."

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Un Amor by Sara Mesa

 

"What if all this passion is out of proportion to its subject/An average beauty, magnified to deific, demonic/stature by the fury of intellect,/a flat-faced girl with slanted eyes and a narrow/waist and a country lilt to her voice/that she should infect your day to the very marrow,/to hate the common light and its simple joys?/Where does this sickness come from, because it is/sickness"

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White Egrets by Derek Walcott

 

"The earth, from here, is like heaven. It flows with colour. A burst of hopeful colour. When we're on the planet we look up and think heaven is elsewhere, but here is what the astronauts and cosmonauts sometimes think: maybe all of us born to it have already died and are in an afterlife. If we must go to an improbable, hard-to-believe-in place when we die, that distant glassy orb with its beautiful, lonely light could well be it."

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Orbital by Samantha Harvey

 

"In the subject line I write: Urgent Matter. My heart accelerates. I type: Present resolution has not been found acceptable by both parties. I then revise: One of the parties has found the present resolution to be unacceptable. For your immediate action. Best, Noa. Another sip of water. Another drag. Send. That's it. It's sent. Done, over, behind me. Actually ahead of me. Shit. What have I done? How can I fall asleep when I'm waiting for a reply? And what if he never replies? What if he's asleep? And why am I like this?"

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Rosenfeld by Maya Kessler


"You have remained with me even in the missing of you."

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Call Me Ishmael Tonight: A Book of Ghazals by Agha Shahid Ali

 

"In the sun all men look like him, slim-built with olive eyes and crooked noses. They smoke Gauloises like he does...She can feel the moon's yearning for water, the hot core of the Earth, the will of the stars, she is magnetic and electric and feverish."

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If Only by Vigdis Hjorth

 

"This is how deep I was lost, my darling, in a love so narcotic I possessed unimpaired splendour having no other want or wish."

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A Year of Last Things: Poems by Michael Ondaatje


"...Venetian cristallo glass doesn't apologize for its weakness. It admits its delicacy; it is confident enough to demand careful treatment; it makes the world understand that it could be easily damaged."
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Art Against Despair by The School of Life

 

"The painting is titled The Anatomy Lessons of Dr. Nicolas Tulp...the presiding Dr. Tulp, with immense composure and dignity, has peeled back the skin on the arm of the corpse, revealing its muscle, tendons, and bone. A ring of men, all in black coats and white starched collars, stand on the periphery and dissolve into shadows; several of them lean far into the light, their faces transfixed by the body displayed before them."

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Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love by Julie Sedivy

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