(1) Otherworlds and Underworlds

“The tacit assertion of this invigorating novel is that the more constrained a person’s life, the more his imagination flourishes, until what’s real is merely grist for the more vital stuff of dreams.”

(2) “Questions of Travel” by Elizabeth Bishop

‘Is it lack of imagination that
makes us come
to imagined places, not just stay
at home?
Or could Pascal have been not
entirely right
about just sitting quietly in one’s room?

Continent, city, country, society:
the choice is never wide
and never free.
And here, or there…No. Should
we have stayed at home,
wherever that may be?’

(3) In the Mood for…Pops of Bright Color

“All it takes to get through a dark day is that little shard of light and bite of color to lift us up.”

(4) A Key Lesson of Adulthood: The Need to Unlearn

“Mr. Stevenson’s disenthrallment comes in the course of a series of sharp and fascinating interviews with technological innovators and scientific visionaries. This disenthralls him of the pessimism about the future and nostalgia about the past that he barely realized he had and whose ‘fingers reach deep into [his] soul.'”