Category Archives: Quotes

Dandelion Child

A Swedish idiomatic expression, maskrosbarn (dandelion child), refers to the capacity of some children, not unlike those with low reactive phenotypes, to survive and even thrive in whatever circumstances they encounter, in much the same way that dandelions seem to prosper irrespective of soil, sun, drought, or rain. Observations of such children have generated, for example, an extensive developmental literature on the phenomenon of resilience, the capacity for positive adaptation despite experiences of significant adversity. A contrasting Swedish neologism, orkidebarn (orchid child), might better describe the context-sensitive individual, whose survival and flourishing is intimately tied, like that of the orchid, to the nurturant or neglectful character of the ambient environment. In conditions of neglect, the orchid promptly declines, while in conditions of support and nurture, it is a flower of unusual delicacy and beauty.

—W. Thomas Boyce & Bruce J. Ellis

via “The Science of Success“

Scenic Detours

I started [Savage Dreams] when I was almost 30. The Nevada Test Site was the place that taught me how to write. Until then I had been writing in three different ways: I had been writing as an art critic, in a very objective, authoritative voice; I had been writing as an environmental journalist, also with objectivity; and then I had also been writing these very lapidary essays on the side. It felt like three different selves, three different voices, and explaining the test site and all the forces converging there demanded that I use all those voices at once. So as to include everything relevant, it also demanded I write in a way both meandering and inclusive. A linear narrative is often like a highway bulldozed through the landscape, and I wanted to create something more like a path that didn’t bulldoze and allowed for scenic detours.

—Rebecca Solnit

One Sound on Another

Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

(iv) Political purpose. — Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

—George Orwell

The Rest of Us

I’m always impressed and more than a little amazed when writers hand over their drafts for posterity like that. The willingness to reveal notes and thoughts-in-progress must separate the geniuses from the rest of us.

I destroy as I go. I write some pages, type them into my ongoing draft, tear the handwritten versions into a trillion pieces and throw them in a garbage bag with the cat litter.

—Maud Newton

Embrace My Inner Slowness

The process of writing, and rewriting, my third novel compelled me to acknowledge that I’m not and will never be a fast writer. I am not a procrastinator or precisely a perfectionist but it takes me years to synthesize character and story, to see the connections (psychological, metaphorical, moral) that I need to see, and to be able to articulate all these things clearly. I think through a story by trying different things out on the page, a kind of slow sculpting in prose. It’s taken me time to embrace my inner slowness.

—Catherine Bush

The Facebook Post

For all the discussion Facebook has prompted … its most profound impact may be to alter, even obliterate, conventional notions of the past, to change the way young people become adults.

Six of my nieces will head off to college over the next several years. Some have been Facebooking since middle school. Even as they leave home, then, they will hang onto that “home” button. That’s hard for me to imagine. As a survivor of the postage-stamp era, college was my big chance to doff the roles in my family and community that I had outgrown, to reinvent myself, to get busy with the embarrassing, exciting, muddy, wonderful work of creating an adult identity. Can you really do that with your 450 closest friends watching, all tweeting to affirm ad nauseam your present self?

Peggy Orenstein, “Growing Up on Facebook“

Herein lies the reality that makes all of this quite messy to deal with. It wasn’t just anyone who left MySpace to go to Facebook. In fact, if we want to get to the crux of what unfolded, we might as well face an uncomfortable reality… What happened was modern day “white flight.” Whites were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. The educated were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those from wealthier backgrounds were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those from the suburbs were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those who deserted MySpace did so by “choice” but their decision to do so was wrapped up in their connections to others, in their belief that a more peaceful, quiet, less-public space would be more idyllic.

danah boyd, “The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online“

The walls around myspace and facebook freak me out much like walled communities offline do. I like having my blog where anyone can read it without having to log into a different space.

Justine Larbalestier, “MySpace v Facebook“