{"author":"Mark Slouka","author_id":"Mark+Slouka","total_quotes":17,"quotes":[{"text":"The only thing your life teaches you is how to live your life. And that’s only if you’re very lucky. And you listen very hard.","author":"Mark Slouka","tags":["dying","grief","lessons","life","living"],"id":7931,"author_id":"Mark+Slouka"},{"text":"The case for the humanities is not hard to make, though it can be difficult--to such an extent have we been marginalized, so long have we acceded to that marginalization--not to sound either defensive or naive. The humanities, done right, are the crucible in which our evolving notions of what it means to be fully human are put to the test; they teach us, incrementally, endlessly, not what to do, but how to be. Their method is confrontational, their domain unlimited, their 'product' not truth but the reasoned search for truth, their 'success' something very much like Frost's momentary stay against confusion.","author":"Mark Slouka","tags":["essays","humanities","humanity","life","truth"],"id":58811,"author_id":"Mark+Slouka"},{"text":"Gone. The saddest word in the language. In any language.","author":"Mark Slouka","tags":["language","loss","words"],"id":82497,"author_id":"Mark+Slouka"},{"text":"I lost my father this past year, and the word feels right because I keep looking for him. As if he were misplaced. As if he could just turn up, like a sock or a set of keys.","author":"Mark Slouka","tags":["death","fathers","grief","loss","sons"],"id":114757,"author_id":"Mark+Slouka"},{"text":"Pleasure and pain are immediate; knowledge, retrospective. A steel ball, suspended on a string, smacks into its brothers and nothing happens: no shock of recognition, no sudden epiphany. We go about our business, buttering the toast, choosing gray socks over brown. But here's the thing: just because we haven't understood something doesn't mean we haven't been shaped by it.","author":"Mark Slouka","tags":["events","knowledge","life","pain","pleasure","understanding"],"id":151562,"author_id":"Mark+Slouka"},{"text":"Life isn't simple. Literature shouldn't be either.","author":"Mark Slouka","tags":["life","literature"],"id":174350,"author_id":"Mark+Slouka"},{"text":"I was raised to be ashamed of my ignorance, and to try to do something about it if at all possible.","author":"Mark Slouka","tags":["ignorance","knowledge","learning","self-improvement"],"id":209257,"author_id":"Mark+Slouka"},{"text":"I suspect that on some level, life is a matter of indefensible loyalties.","author":"Mark Slouka","tags":["beliefs","life","loyalties","thoughts"],"id":215874,"author_id":"Mark+Slouka"},{"text":"Every step you take, a million doors open in front of you like poppies; your next step closes them, and another million bloom. You get on a train, you pick up a lamp, you speak, you don’t. What decides why one thing gets picked to be the way it will be? Accident? Fate? Some weakness in ourselves? Forget your harps, your tin-foil angels—the only heaven worth having would be the heaven of answers.","author":"Mark Slouka","tags":["chance","fate"],"id":236223,"author_id":"Mark+Slouka"},{"text":"I distrust the perpetually busy, always have. The frenetic ones spinning in tight little circles like poisoned rats. The slower ones, grinding away their fourscore and ten in righteousness and pain. They are the soul-eaters.","author":"Mark Slouka","tags":["busy","busyness","choices","life"],"id":245470,"author_id":"Mark+Slouka"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":17,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}