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- You can tell a content writer by the total lack of original content in their writing. The hallmark of ‘content’ is the regurgitation of familiar topics and tropes. Content is just information addiction in verbal form.
- I’m always startled by the lack of shame that most ‘writers’ have in declaring themselves thus — as if competing with Shakespeare, Dante, or Joyce were nothing. A trifle.
- What we face really is a crisis of authority: no one is willing, or able to, say what is good or bad in art.
- We excuse bad writing on one or more of the following grounds: as an extension of expression, information, or politics.
- The architecture of thoughts rests on cognitive foundations. If the cognitive apparatus is fucked, so is thought.
- Essay writing requires a kind of schooled innocence. Montaigne, the greatest essayist, writes naively through a classical lens.
- The internet makes solitude impossible, and without solitude, there cannot be revery. Screens disrupt the poetic relationship between the human being and the world.
