This struggle is sweeter than a life without dignity.

Mahmoud Khalil in a letter to his son, published in The Guardian

I was destined to become the eternal museum viewer.

a PIHKAL trip report on 2C-E

Submitted by Wesley.

The boxes only remind them, on some days, of the graceless century to which they all still belong.

Ultramarine, Mariette Navarro (translated by Eve Hill-Angus)

Hard to pick one sentence from this. Some of the other contenders:

There are the living, the dead, and sailors.

A pair of socks says everything about the hurry, the sudden and unexpected departure, like in those ruins where you find objects left in the lurch, ready to be used, just an overturned vase here and there to recall the catastrophe.

One has to fall back on a few childhood instincts when it feels like nothing funny will happen anytime soon.

A fork in the road – with every direction leading to a hell where the guy from Take That is giving you life advice.

“Robbie Williams: Radical Honesty review – ‘Tone deaf, self-important, incredibly bad art’”, Eddy Frankel for The Guardian

We don’t have the human language to make a sentence like “That is bad news and I am annoyed, specifically I am annoyed with you for doing something wrong but thank you for telling me, I am pleased with that bit” sound convincing.

“another guy in India”, Dan Davies in his newsletter Back of Mind

Submitted by craig.

We now see the forest not as a mere collection of individuals, but as an orchestra of phase correlated plants.

Alessandro Chiolerio as quoted in a press release on a study of spruce tree communication during a solar eclipse

Like every born-different or made-different kid with poverty origins who lives in the airlock of the Technical I can swiftly recognize the tone of the guy standing on the spaceship side of the door slamming the eject button at me.

“Why I Cannot Be Technical”, Cat Hicks for her newsletter Fight For The Human

(She was never good at keeping her robe closed—this was true both metaphorically and literally.)

How To Lose Your Mother, Molly Jong-Fast (excerpted in Vanity Fair)