"Here are your tortured poets. All from Mahmoud Darwish to Dr. Refat Alareer to Khaled Juma, these are tortured poets. Tortured by longing for a home they can never return to, tortured by the world they were born to for BEING BORN. Palestine, home to the tortured poets department." [@/folkoftheshelf on X. April 20th, 2024.]

In a society that values conformity and obedience, the individual who dares to think for himself is often banished and ridiculed. These non-conformists, these outcasts, are the true pioneers of society, the ones who push us to question our assumptions and broaden our horizons. They are the ones who are not afraid to be different, to be themselves. If you feel like an outsider, like you don't fit in with the crowd, that's a good thing. It means that you have the potential to make a real difference in the world. Don't be afraid to be yourself, to follow your own path. The world needs your unique perspective.

Timothy Leary

kurt vonnegut, being good at things is not the point of doing them.

“It’s good to leave each day behind, like flowing water, free of sadness. Yesterday is gone and its tale told. Today new seeds are growing.”

— Rumi

Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.

-Ramana Maharshi

“You’re a slut and a whore for the algorithm. I couldn’t do it anymore. You can never feed it enough. You start out making art, and hoping that the door will open. You’re looking for that viral moment so it opens up the door and you can do the thing full time. But you start to compromise just to get the door to open: guessing what it wants, debasing yourself, alienating yourself. Until you’re not even in service to your art anymore. You’re in service to the algorithm. Deep down every artist just wants to be seen. Everyone does. And that’s how it controls you. The algorithm makes you behave in a certain way, create in a certain way, in exchange for being seen. And if something can change what you do, it can change who you are. And I didn’t sign up for that. I didn’t sign up to become a content creator. Art was supposed to be a way for me to be in search of, in service to, in community with. It was my ministry. Art was supposed to be my ministry.”

EILEEN (2023) dir. William Oldroyd

Mizu, Blue Eye Samurai

"Find out what makes you kinder, what opens you up and brings out the most loving, generous, and unafraid version of you―and go after those things as if nothing else matters. Because, actually, nothing does."

George Saunders

“That’s what I consider true generosity. You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.”

— Simone de Beauvoir, All Men are Mortal

“In any given moment we have two options: To step forward into growth or to step back into safety.”

— Abraham Maslow