What if we were able to train ourselves to desire only things that are firmly within our control? Then, in a very real sense, we’d always get what we want, and never get what we don’t want. Our happiness would never spill, since the cup of our desires is reliable and holds firm.
Massimo Pigliucci and Gregory Lopez, A Handbook for New Stoics: How to Thrive in a World Out of Your Control—52 Week-by-Week Lessons [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]
I don’t want to be high any more or again, and this sends me into a spiral of misery, life seems completely empty if this magic world is too painful for me. I want to die and I have infinite terror of the pain of every form of death. I see emptiness and hopelessness everywhere.
Mary Sativa, Acid Temple Ball [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]
The idea that I was building a library to bequeath to the next generation is one of the greatest fallacies of my life. The next generation don’t want old books – they don’t seem to want books at all.
Linda Grant, I Murdered My Library
