Suli Qyre

“Every artist who is open and attentive will necessarily become more aware with experience. And this means their work will continuously improve. What it is created today will not be the best by tomorrow's standard.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/artist...

“In France philosophy seems to come before technology; here in the Anglo-American world we race ahead with technology and hope the ideas will look after themselves.” — Zadie Smith, “Generation Why?”

“I've become too combative, too resistant, too fortified in myself. I'm fighting my way through life instead of flowing with it. All of this is unsustainable, and I need to bring an end to this tension before it brings an end to me.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/lost-i...

“He slips silently from the text into his imagination. The activity of reading becomes secondary to the world of the book that lives in his head, and this means his body becomes irrelevant.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/imagin...

“I lacked the courage to investigate the weaknesses of the wicked, because I discovered they are the same as the weaknesses of the saintly.” — Umberto Eco, Postscript to the Name of the Rose

“Time moves so quickly for us simply because we are enormously distracted. We have endless responsibilities and obligations to fulfill, and our preoccupation with these things causes time to fly.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/slowin...

“See the needs that your attention is drawn to when it is open and free. Feel the joy that arises when one of your needs is met and notice the difference between this feeling and the relief that follows from satisfying an attachment.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/rememb...

“I reached out for something to attach myself to — and I found nothing. But in reaching out, in the effort to grasp, to attach myself, left high and dry as I was, I nevertheless found something I had not looked for — myself.” — Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn

“Remember to pay attention to your attention. Recognize the connection between your suffering and your attachments, and how the former arises when your attention is controlled by the latter.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/rememberin...

“Were we to encounter such a being, we would not recognize it. It would seem to us far less than it actually is. We might appreciate it in a limited way, but we could not fully understand it.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/the-pe...

“I must choose, and I must choose an option that enables action. For compassion is never merely theoretical — it is always substantive action to meet needs. I cannot allow myself to be distracted by impractical solutions.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/practi...

“Maybe what he expected from books ... was messages in a bottle or hard drugs or windows through which, on rare occasions, one sees Alice’s white rabbit skim past like a lightning bolt.” — Roberto Bolaño, Between Parentheses

“The importance of her art is not found in its social value or anything of the sort. It is important because she knows she must do it. She must create the things she creates because there is nowhere else for them to be made.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/doubt-...

“With their lives complicated and their needs frustrated by systems outside of their control, it is no wonder that people are unable to pay attention to what is happening to them.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/frustr...

“The miraculous thing about the present period is that appearances, so long reduced to a voluntary servitude, have now become sovereign, and turned back towards (and against) us by means of the very technology from which we had earlier evicted them.” — Jean Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil

“Our judgments would not be a problem if we allowed them to arise and then depart, but we also have a tendency to become attached to them. We end up limiting our understanding of both world and self because we have already judged their contents.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/who-we...

“We tend to become stuck with a very narrow way of seeing the world, a way that follows directly from the attachments we have formed. We build our identities around this narrow view, which keeps us trapped in an endless battle with suffering.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/who-we-are...

“Because suffering arises from attachment to my existing pattern of life, change is necessary at the most basic level. Even so, I do not need to change everything about myself all at once. The transformation must be deep but it can also be gradual.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/transf...

“Inconvenient truths are the salt of literature. They don’t guarantee that the results will be good, but it’s where words derive their power and flavor.” — Elena Ferrante, Frantumaglia

“The experiences we can have directly in our own lives will always be a tiny subset of the total experience of humanity. By compressing experience into the medium of language, a book allows us to experience much more than we otherwise could.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/not-ju...

“The true life does not yet exist in full. It is only fleetingly felt in these glimpses, these moments where it breaks through. It is only when my mind is emptied of everything and I become absorbed in the act of living itself that I arrive here.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/lettin...

“I can do everything with my language, but not with my body. What I hide by my language, my body utters. I can deliberately mold my message, not my voice. … My body is a stubborn child, my language is a very civilized adult.” — Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse

“Sometimes the ability to choose is completely impaired by the physical circumstances of the body. This brings with it the daunting possibility that we ourselves might not be able to make a choice in certain situations.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/natura...

“Attachment is so nefarious precisely because it easily goes unnoticed. We quietly become accustomed to a certain way of life and we fail to realize we are also becoming more rigid and resistant to movement.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/moving...

“It now feels like a promise has been broken. We were promised consistency but we received chaos instead. Deep down, we might have known nothing was ever certain, but we never expected to face a change of this magnitude.” Read more: suliqyre.substack.com/p/moving-wit...

“Sometimes we will land on an interpretation that feels more substantial than the others, and feel assured that we have grasped the meaning of the work. But on other occasions, the artwork will resist any interpretation we give it.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/final-...

“God does not work through the is. God works through what Lao Tzu calls the weak, the empty; this is the same God.” — Philip K. Dick, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

“The result of attachment is always suffering and the loss of joy. This loss is not valuable. I do not gain anything by suffering more. I've already suffered enough to understand suffering, provided I'm willing to examine it.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/suffer...

“To be a being allowed to yourself is the glory of existing. To be able to say to yourself with shame and awkwardly: it’s you, too, you I love, a bit. I allow myself. Then I reach the ultra-sonorous.” — Clarice Lispector, A Breath of Life

“He couldn't accept the sentences he already had, so what was the point of adding to their number? Still, he could not allow himself to give up. Giving up would only condemn him to the interminable void.” Read more: suliqyre.com/posts/fighti...