Why do so many poets settle for so little? I don’t understand why they’re not greedy for what’s inside them. The heart has the ability to experience so much—and we don’t have much time. 

Why do so many poets settle for so little? I don’t understand why they’re not greedy for what’s inside them. The heart has the ability to experience so much—and we don’t have much time. 

But then, as Cohen himself wrote about Hydra, "The years are flying past and we all waste so much time wondering if we dare to do this or that. The thing is to leap, to try, to take a chance.

J: We can fight for science by being cool with the idea that it’s not our jobs to be an encyclopaedia, and it’s not our job to present a balanced view. Artists are supposed to be intuitive and feeling, so they should be encouraged to find things that make them feel strong emotions and try to channel that without worrying about coming across as biased or filtering it through a rational mindset. The instinct to qualify what you’re saying is characteristic of scientists, and those sections of the media with any integrity, because they don’t want to be proven wrong. But most media outlets have financial interests outside of presenting an even or scientific view, so impartiality isn’t on the cards – it’s up to the arts to do what it can to balance that out. The arts has always been the best way to communicate the beauty and the terror of science, so we just need to play to people’s emotions on topics we feel strongly about. And we do that by yelling as loud as we can.

We shook hands and I said I liked your reading and he thanked me but didn’t say anything back, I guess because he didn’t like my poetry and because Tomás couldn’t lie for the sake of politeness when it came to the most sacrosanct of arts. I was surprised how furious I became and how fast, but I didn’t say anything; I just smiled slightly in a way intended to communicate that my own compliment had been mere graciousness and that I in fact believed his writing constituted a new low for his or any language, his or any art.

"Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Credit emerged as a widespread tool of Spanish business in the 17th century. The city of Antwerp, in the Spanish Netherlands, lay at the heart of European commerce and its bankers financed most of Charles V's and Philip II's wars on credit. The use of "notes of exchange" became common as Antwerp's banks became increasingly powerful and led to extensive speculation that helped to exaggerate price shifts. Although these trends laid the foundation for the development of capitalism in Spain and Europe as a whole, the total lack of regulation and pervasive corruption meant that small landowners often lost everything with a single stroke of misfortune. Estates in Spain, and especially in Castile, grew progressively larger and the economy became increasingly uncompetitive, particularly during the reigns of Philip III and IV when repeated speculative crises shook Spain.