Sarah Malley

A problem with decisions between past and future was you made them in the present.

Tony Tulathimutte, Private Citizens

We, too, know that winters are coming. For many of us it is the ruling fact: the whole year is surrendered to the cold. The thoughts and itineraries of the summer are the lackeys of the dark.

I fight hard against this demonic capitulation, but it is hard to enjoy an August day qua August day. The stronger the fight, the greater the acknowledgment of

We can do anything, or almost, but how balanced, magnanimous, and modest one has to be to do anything! And also how patient. It is as true in the arts as anywhere else.

Mary Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

So that was the season of light. Stooping always over it, like a schoolmaster trying to catch me out in an act of enjoyment, was the season of darkness.

I can no longer pretend that the winter is fine. I have tried to tell myself that the country is not dead, but resting and regrouping, stroking the inchoate life inside it, and that that's what is h

First there was nothing. Then there was everything.

Then, in a park above a western city after dark, the air is raining messages.

A woman sits on the ground, leaning against a pine. Its bark presses hard against her back, hard as life. Its needles scent the air and a force hums in the heart of the wood. Her ears tune down to the lowest frequencies. T

So that’s my problem: the weird transformation of signal into action or sensation. The universe I occupy is a creature of my head. It is wholly unique to me. The process of intimacy is the process of becoming better at inviting others to have a look around. The sensation of loneliness is the crushing acknowledgement that however good you get at giv

The blackbird remained as elusive as ever. Its abiding mysteriousness is one of the greatest bequests of my childhood. If I had thought for a moment that I had understood, it would have been a catastrophe. I might have ended up as an oilman, a banker, or a pimp. An early conviction of mastery or comprehension turns people into monsters. Those myste

Adam named all the mammals and the birds—so forging a connection with them that went to the root of what both they and he were. His very first words were the names. We are shaped by the things we say and the labels we give. So Adam was shaped by his interactions with the animals. That interaction, and that shaping, are simple historical facts. We’v

We see, but we do not see: we use our eyes, but our gaze is glancing, frivolously considering its object. We see the signs, but not their meanings.

Alexandra Horowitz, On Looking