#simi

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#humour #pessimistic #writing #creativity

Abby must have been the one who found the safe house, because Townsend didn't like it. "The building across the street is under construction," he snarled as soon as we'd carried our bags inside. "The elevator has key card access, and I've hacked into the surveillance cameras from every system on the block," Abby argued. "We have a three-hundred-sixty-degree visual." "Excellent." Townsend dropped his bag. "Now the circle can see us from every angle." "Don't mind Agent Townsend, girls," Abby told us. "He's a glass-half-empty kind of spy." "Also known as the good kind," he countered. Abby huffed. ↗

— Ally Carter

#spy #excellence

The only way I can describe the extent of my anxiety is to say that I felt as if I were pregnant with a rock. ↗

— Katharine Graham

#simile #strikes #washington-post #anxiety

Know yourselves- be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye. ↗

— Peter Wessel Zapffe

#existencialism #pessimism #pessimism

Stress level: extreme. It's like she was a jar with the lid screwed on too tight, and inside the jar were pickles, angry pickles, and they were fermenting, and about to explode. ↗

— Fiona Wood

#stress #stress

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#simile #taxation #economics

The very shapes of the trees were like frozen screams. ↗

— Susanna Clarke

#screams #simile #simile

Trying to reason with an addict was like trying to blow out a lightbulb. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#addiction

Pessimism is not good for the soul." "I sold my soul years ago." "To whom?" "The bitch goddess Success. She cut town before paying off. ↗

— Jonathan Kellerman

#milo-sturgis #pessimism

Critical pessimists, such as media critics Mark Crispin Miller, Noam Chomsky, and Robert McChesney, focus primarily on the obstacles to achieving a more democratic society. In the process, they often exaggerate the power of big media in order to frighten readers into taking action. I don't disagree with their concern about media concentration, but the way they frame the debate is self-defeating insofar as it disempowers consumers even as it seeks to mobilize them. Far too much media reform rhetoric rests on melodramatic discourse about victimization and vulnerability, seduction and manipulation, "propaganda machines" and "weapons of mass deception". Again and again, this version of the media reform movement has ignored the complexity of the public's relationship to popular culture and sided with those opposed to a more diverse and participatory culture. The politics of critical utopianism is founded on a notion of empowerment; the politics of critical pessimism on a politics of victimization. One focuses on what we are doing with media, and the other on what media is doing to us. As with previous revolutions, the media reform movement is gaining momentum at a time when people are starting to feel more empowered, not when they are at their weakest. ↗

— Henry Jenkins

#media-studies #optimism #revolution #pessimism