I felt really drawn to this passage while reading “The Overstory” by Richard Powers:“People see better what looks like them... They think the thoughts they’re already comfortable with. They give themselves the pleasure of their own soft, agreeable confirmations.

Murakami writes: “It’s all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine.”

“The good-to-great leaders never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes. They never aspired to be put on a pedestal or become unreachable icons. They were seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extraordinary results.”

If you get what you want and you’re still not happy, you’ve spent everything and gained nothing. It’s better to be the person who gets murdered than to be the killer and be tormented with anxiety.

There's a powerful excerpt from “Pale Fire” by Vladimir Nabokov, a brilliant writer who is more known for “Lolita,” but his other works are sometimes overshadowed:I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

Consider this profound thought by Haruki Murakami:In everyone's life, there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can't move forward anymore. When we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That's how we survive.

I've found myself haunted by this self-observation by Franz Kafka: “I am free and that is why I am lost.”

Murakami often hits the nail on the head with such simple yet profound insights. This quote beautifully captures the essence of vulnerability and human connection. What happens when people open their hearts? They get better.

Life is full of surprises. Some things happen for a reason, others at random.While we look for the negative in some things, we also receive positives.

I find this excerpt from the introduction to “The Global Minotaur” by Paul Mason to be profoundly striking:“Most politicians cannot be theorists. First, because they are rarely thinkers; second, because the frenetic lifestyle they impose on themselves leaves no time for big ideas.

There is a compelling argument within “The Mediated Construction of Social Reality” by Nick Couldry & Andreas Hepp, exploring our reliance on digital media and our reaction to its failures.

“WE CAN, IF we so choose, wander aimlessly over the continent of the arbitrary. Rootless as some winged seed blown about on a serendipitous spring breeze...