Replacing on’s lovely o, a perfect form, with i, that impudent, egotistical erection, in is boorish, vulgar, so denotatively and connotatively crass that the mouth seems to resist pronouncing it.
Technology enables messy lives, allowing us to be in a coworker’s pocket or a stranger’s living room. In a world ruled by technology, the lines aren’t simply blurred, Shafrir points out — they’re erased.
To be on is to be alive, energetic, aflame, to display one’s best self. Similarly, on is language’s best self, demonstrating how much can be done with so little. Compact, suggestive, manifold, on is the preposition that launched a thousand idioms.
On, on! The next time you encounter on beginning a title, ignore what follows. Recite the glorious syllable to yourself in stentorian tones, revel in its wondrous reverberations. Let your eyes linger on its elegant appearance, take in its curves, appreciate its eternal form and endless content.
Art imitates life in tech, but novels give us one precious advantage over reality: the time to reflect on what we’re consuming.
Grief doesn’t go away, it’s something you live with. And hopefully it becomes something that makes you stronger.
I think of a novel as a question that takes the length of a book to ask
The ‘soldering of two great worlds’ — Europe and the Americas — was one of Walcott’s major projects.
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