Future Hope

"We tend to exist in a distracted present, where forces on the periphery are magnified and those immediately before us are ignored. Our ability to create a plan—much less follow through on it—is undermined by our need to be able to improvise our way through any number of external impacts that stand to derail us at any moment. Instead of finding a stable foothold in the here and now, we end up reacting to the ever-present assault of simultaneous impulses and commands."

Douglas Rushkoff, Present Shock

"I have no patience for contemporary handlebar mustaches. They anger me. They look indulgent and ridiculous. If you have a handlebar mustache, that is pretty much all you are. You are a delivery system for a handlebar mustache. I saw a guy in Brooklyn once with a handlebar mustache, pierced ears, a fedora hat and jodhpurs. He was a collage of sartorial attempts at evading himself. It looked as if he were interrupted during a shave in the mid-1850s and had to grab some clothes and dress quickly while being chased through a time tunnel."

Marc Maron, My Desperate, Stupid, Emotional Hunt for the Perfect Pants

"The future is extremely hard to see through the lens of the present. It’s very easy to unconsciously dismiss the first versions of something as frivolous or useless."

Dustin Curtis, What a stupid idea

"Those who can write a book are the ones that can see the connections between their thoughts."

Brian Sanders

"When people are more outraged by the ambiguous ending of The Sopranos than some young girl being stoned to death, then there’s something wrong."

Steven Soderbergh, State of Cinema

"The market for castles in upstate New York dried up completely."

Susan Phemister, Their Home Is a Castle, Like It or Not

"Cinema is a specificity of vision. It’s an approach in which everything matters. It’s the polar opposite of generic or arbitrary and the result is as unique as a signature or a fingerprint."

Steven Soderbergh, State of Cinema

"As my head uncluttered, my attention span expanded."

Paul Miller, I’m still here: back online after a year without the internet

"if action by Congress could have saved one person, one child, a few hundred, a few thousand — if it could have prevented those people from losing their lives to gun violence in the future while preserving our Second Amendment rights, we had an obligation to try."

Barack Obama, Statement on the Senate Gun Control Vote

"I didnt realize that the news organizations look to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity."

Jon Stewart, Crossfire

"…it’s with eager anticipation that I head off to the battlefield to defend, be ignored by, and then—left all alone, with my personal demons closing in—kill myself for the land I love so dearly."

The Onion, It Would Be An Honor To Serve My Country, Return With PTSD, Sit On A Mental Health Care Waitlist, Then Kill Myself

"[After the telegraph’s development] …spiritualists would later petition the U.S. Congress again on the belief that in the mysterious workings of the telegraph there might be hints of a much greater ‘spiritual telegraph’ between Heaven and Earth."

John Freeman, The Tyranny of E-mail

"Lies need other lies because the truth is their enemy. The truth leads to martyrdom and lies lead to murder."

Brian Sanders, Crucible

"Just below the applause, or within it, can you hear the grinding? That’s the relentless chewing mechanism of fame, girding to grind the purity and the promise to dust."

Gary Smith, The Chosen One

"When I want dark, depressing thoughts about alienation, I watch cable news."

Josh Lyman, The West Wing