What if all this time we have misunderstood the story of the Tower of Babel?…What if it was not just to different tribes but to each individual human being that a separate language was given, unique as fingerprints. And, step two, to make life among humans even more strifeful and confounding, he beclouded their perception of this. So that while we might understand that there are many peoples speaking many different languages, we are fooled into thinking that everyone in our own tribe speaks the same language we do. -Sigrid Nunez, What Are You Going Through.

Choice in respect to important matters became more and more difficult; people found it troublesome to settle on a mode of work, for instance, or a partner. Choice in respect to trivial matters, on the other hand, assumed an importance that no one could have thought to predict. -George W.S. Trow

This obsession with everyone’s thoughts and behavior seems to suggest a desire for a moral code, a desire for certainty in an uncertain world. -Alicia Kennedy

[Curating is] an act of generosity—you’re sharing what you love and what has inspired you. … Algorithms, by definition, are based on calculations that treat the viewer as a consumer and nothing else. -Martin Scorsese

For as much as we might predict and project, the future is, and always will be, an undiscovered country. -Jamelle Bouie

People have done this before, but not us. -Ada Limón.

via ann friedman