“I think if you look at any facet of nature in enough detail, you find it fascinating. How could you not? The universe is so full of marvels. Here's an example -- rain, the shape of rain. I was minding my own business, working on my book, looking out the window, and it was raining and I was noticing that the raindrops were falling in that classic round-looking way, and I thought, 'I wonder if raindrops really are round?' So I started researching it a little, and I discovered that raindrops change shape 300 times a second.” IfsThinkingWayLooksLittlesBookEnoughFallUniverseMy OwnWonderExampleShapesRainWindowRoundsDetailsClassicFascinatingNoticingOwn BusinessFacetsRaindropsMinding My Own Business Author:Diane Ackerman
“So often I wonder whether it is my right to capitalize, as I feel, so often, on the grief of others. But then I justify, in my own particular thoughts, by feeling that I can contribute a little to the understanding of what others are going through; then there is reason for doing it.” FeelsLittlesI CanReasonFeelingsUnderstandingMy OwnGriefWonderParticularJustify Book:Mark Z. Danielewski's House of leaves Source: Mark Z. Danielewski's House of leaves
“People wonder whether I got my presenting job as a result of my own abilities or because of Gordon, which is a little unfair.” PeopleLittlesJobsMy OwnAbilityResultsWonderUnfairPresenting Author:Tana Ramsay
“I could not help wondering in my own mind....how it came to pass that our joints of meat were of such extraordinary shapes - and whether our butcher contracted for all the deformed sheep that came into the world; but I kept my reflections to myself.” WorldMindHelpingMy OwnWonderShapesReflectionExtraordinaryMeatSheepJointsButchers Author:Charles Dickens
“My own first love was biology. I spent a great part of my adolescence in the Natural History museum in London (and I still go to the Botanic Garden almost every day, and to the Zoo every Monday). The sense of diversity of the wonder of innumerable forms of life has always thrilled me beyond anything else.” FirstsStillsFormNaturalMy OwnWonderDiversityGardenLondonBiologyMuseumsAdolescenceFirst LoveMondayZoosNatural History Author:Oliver Sacks
“I lived, particularly in childhood but with lessening intensity right on to middle age, in a world that was peculiarly and intimately my own, scarcely to be shared with others or even made plausible to them. I habitually read special meanings into things, scenes and places qualities of wonder, beauty, promise, or horror for which there was no external evidence visible or plausible to others. My world was peopled with mysteries, seductive hints, vague menaces, "intimations of immortality.” WorldMadeAgeMy OwnQualityWonderMysteryChildhoodMiddleSpecialPromiseHorrorSceneEvidenceImmortalityVisibleIntensityVagueMiddle AgesHintsSeductiveMenacePlausible Book:MEMOIRS 1925-1950 Source: MEMOIRS 1925-1950
“If anyone ever wonders why there's nothing coming from me, it's not my fault. I'm doing the work. No, I haven't deteriorated or gone insane. Suddenly, I just can't get anything into print. And apparently I'm not alone in this. There are people of very high standing, authors who are having problems. So I have been told. In my own case, the more disturbing element is the editor-in-chief who said to me, "I think this book is terrific. It ought to be in print. I can't publish it -- I've been told I mustn't." The indication is that I'm not writing what people want to read, but I never did.” PeopleIfsThinkingWantWritingHas BeensSaidI CanBookProblemMy OwnWonderCasesGoneHavensOughtElementsStandingFaultsInsaneChiefsPrintEditorsPublishTerrificDisturbingNot AloneIndication Author:Tanith Lee
“My fingers curl through the holes in the wicker, through the wet grass beneath it, trying to hold tight to the sharp blades of the present. Somewhere in my brain a sinkhole is bubbling over, and each bubble contains a scene from a tiny sunken world ... I have never been the prophet of my own past before. It makes me wonder how the healthy dreamers can bear to sleep at all, if sleep means that you have to peer into that sinkhole by yourself. ... I had almost forgotten this occipital sorrow, the way you are so alone with the things you see in dreams.” IfsWorldWayTryingMeanDreamPastMy OwnSleepBrainWonderBearsSorrowHealthySceneFingersForgottenTinyHolesGrassProphetDreamerBubblesWetPeersBladesCurlsSinkholes Author:Karen Russell
“It's unsettling, to lose the safety of the familiar, even when what's disrupted is an ordinary routine. When I began this poem, I was grieving for the loss of my old barbershop in Manhattan, and wondering at the strangeness of my new one. I didn't have any idea the poem would break into the underworld, opening a deeper subject: the continuing force of the old griefs routine helps to mediate, and my strange, sheer wonder at my own survival. Where's home now? In the contingent present, in which anything can disappear, and where we're sometimes granted some form of grace.” IdeasSometimesHelpingHomeFormForceLosesMy OwnLossGriefWonderBreakGraceSubjectsStrangeSurvivalOrdinarySafetyDeeperDisappearFamiliarOpeningGrantedGrievingRoutineContinuingSheerManhattanStrangenessUnderworldBarbershop Author:Mark Doty