The Miscellany of Stewart McCoy

“The Smithsonian has 18,000 light fixtures. The Cooper-Hewitt alone has 5,000 buttons and a frightening number of matchsafes. The zoo at the Smithsonian has pandas. Real live ones. We have a lot of dead parrots, apparently. The list goes on. For a while. And people love us for it. People love us for it because by preserving these things we keep open a narrative space in which to consider the meaning of things.”

– Aaron Straup Cope

“Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

– Steve Jobs, 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech

“Introspection means talking to yourself, and one of the best ways of talking to yourself is by talking to another person. One other person you can trust, one other person to whom you can unfold your soul. One other person you feel safe enough with to allow you to acknowledge things—to acknowledge things to yourself—that you otherwise can’t. Doubts you aren’t supposed to have, questions you aren’t supposed to ask. Feelings or opinions that would get you laughed at by the group or reprimanded by the authorities.”

– William Deresiewicz, Solitude and Leadership

“Happiness is more like knowledge than like belief. There are lots of things we believe but don’t know. Knowledge is not just up to you, it requires the cooperation of the world beyond you — you might be mistaken. Still, even if you’re mistaken, you believe what you believe. Pleasure is like belief that way. But happiness isn’t just up to you. It also requires the cooperation of the world beyond you. Happiness, like knowledge, and unlike belief and pleasure, is not a state of mind.”

– David Sosa, The Spoils of Happiness