The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the… — David Mitchell
The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent.
The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the imposition of will.
p. 392Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
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"And if you threaten my reputation, oh well, I'll have to ruin yours!"
p. 76
I hear my father-in-law's response[...] "Naïve, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!"
Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?
p. 508
Books don't offer real escape but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.
