{"author":"Martijn Benders","author_id":"Martijn+Benders","total_quotes":20,"quotes":[{"text":"I bought a backscrabber. One more reason to have no need for a relationship.","author":"Martijn Benders","tags":["backscrabber","love","relationship"],"id":48509,"author_id":"Martijn+Benders"},{"text":"I have voted to legalize recreational incarnations. We should no longer jail people in a body just because they have chosen to incarnate in this dimension for fun. Are you guys with me on this one?","author":"Martijn Benders","tags":["bodies","freedom-of-expression","prison","recreational-incarnations"],"id":62826,"author_id":"Martijn+Benders"},{"text":"To me, quotes function as the sunscreen against a writers brilliance. As soon as I cannot stand to look at the magnificence of the acropolis of pure thought the writer managed to doll out in the cognizant chaos - I quote him, and by doing so I am discharged and freed. On the other hand, even while I do acknowledge that some things cannot be quoted, I vehemently distrust any writer whose army of quotes does not consist of impeccable warriors but the sort of bootless canon fodder that caused one to write in the first place, wishing to circumlocute that strappant lot. No writer can ever recover from bad quotes. I check the army of quotes, and if it has no sporting chance against a simple pack of butter then I will simply never ever read this person. One often hears short stories are the benchmark of great writers, but if you ask me, I'd rather first look at their quotes.","author":"Martijn Benders","tags":["army-of","quotes","writers-on-writing"],"id":144473,"author_id":"Martijn+Benders"},{"text":"Talent is 98% hard work - even Brel said so. The best signal for lack of talent is therefore quite simply low production. That does of course not mean high production guarantees talent, so something does exist that needs to be present - what is that? Talent and Drive - both are quite useless without the other, but what exactly is 'talent'? I would say its a form of the unconditioned: in some people it survives, even unto old age. Some learn to focus it on a particular craft. But without drive, it still goes nowhere.","author":"Martijn Benders","tags":["drive","jacques-brel","talent"],"id":144740,"author_id":"Martijn+Benders"},{"text":"Thinking outside the box' is ridiculous nonsense, since whatever you can do in a 'box' or closed environment is not 'thinking'. If I 'think' about a problem but limit my thoughts to certain dimensions - then I am not thinking at all, because thinking implies that one at least tries to take all relevant factors into consideration, and as there's usually no way to tell which factors are and which are not relevant restricted thought is not 'thinking' and so 'thinking outside the box' is simply a eufemism for 'let's start to think', but the metafor implies a hidden desire to return to conformity immediately.","author":"Martijn Benders","tags":["out-of-the-box","thinking"],"id":156070,"author_id":"Martijn+Benders"},{"text":"Mensen vragen wel eens, geloof jij in God, Martinus? En dan zeg ik ja, uiteraard. Wat ik er dan niet bij vertel is dat ik ook geloof dat hij donkergroen is, inferieur aan de mens en uit op het stelen van mijn portemonnee. Want dan zit er altijd wel een slimmerik tussen die vraagt of God dan ook een hoed op heeft, en of ik hem niet met een leprechaun verwar, een schepsel waar de Nederlanders nooit een woord voor hebben uitgevonden. En ik zou niet weten wat ik daarop moet antwoorden, behalve dan dat God absoluut een hoed draagt, en zeer waarschijnlijk met een klavertje vier rondloopt, wat hij ook wel nodig heeft want ik heb helemaal geen portemonnee.","author":"Martijn Benders","tags":["god","leprechaun","portemonnee"],"id":165035,"author_id":"Martijn+Benders"},{"text":"Literature is impossible, in exactly this sense: every new generation has so much 'catching up' to do that the real choice that presents itself soon is the following one: one either spends ones entire life just reading all the classics, or one pretends to be 'contemporary and hip' and never reads any of the classics because in order to pretend to be contemporary one has to at least superficially read the works of contemporaries. Hence the dilemma: one either does not care about being fashionable, or one is fashionable and just learns to mimic some knowledge about the classics. As time develops this rift just becomes bigger, because the amount of books written grows and grows to insane proportions. Conclusion: one can only be hip in the future if one does not read at all, which is a phenomenon I am already witnessing in the media.","author":"Martijn Benders","tags":["books","literature","reading"],"id":170588,"author_id":"Martijn+Benders"},{"text":"In a neurotic society, insane ideas can become 'normal', the current triumph of tribalism is the result of rabid global anti-intellectualism.","author":"Martijn Benders","tags":["anti-intellectualism","insanity"],"id":184848,"author_id":"Martijn+Benders"},{"text":"Every writer on this planet THINKS he is a great writer (why waste your entire life writing when you believe you are mediocre?) but its deemed socially unacceptable to actually speak out such thoughts. So, modesty is always a public concept and not an inner one. For that reason alone 'modesty' can actually be said to be the product of a large ego, for the ego is primarily concerned with survival and society rewards this dishonesty and tends to punish honesty (see Camus).","author":"Martijn Benders","tags":["camus","modesty","writers-on-writing"],"id":193059,"author_id":"Martijn+Benders"},{"text":"Ramadan is not fasting. Ramadan is an Islamic feast where one stuffs oneself twice a day with food, and in between lets ones intestines dry out. To describe that process as 'fasting' seems rather ubiquitous to me. The amount of food transported into the body is probably exactly the same, but because of the dehydration the food is processed less effectively. As customs go, most customs are typically silly and Ramadan is no exception. I can accept such silliness when people keep it to themselves, but unfortunately one sees such a sharp rise in 'policing' others that even non Muslims are now experiencing violence because they are eating at daytime in the Ramadan period.","author":"Martijn Benders","tags":["food","islam","ramadan"],"id":210465,"author_id":"Martijn+Benders"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":20,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}