“ Ruth was a novelist, and novelists, Oliver asserted, should have cats and books. ”
I would like to think of my 'ignorance' less as a personal failing and more as a massive cultural trend, an example of doubling, of psychic numbing, that characterizes the end of the millennium. If we can’t act on knowledge, then we can’t survive without ignorance.
~ Ruth Ozeki
In my heart, I am American, and I believe I have a free will and can take charge of my own destiny.
We place such crazy importance on physical appearance in our image-obsessed culture, on youth and beauty to define our sense of self-worth, that aging, by default, becomes a kind of defect, something secret and corrosive and shameful.
By changing our history and our memory, they try to erase all our shame.
