Rebecca Solnit
Rebecca Solnit
Rebecca Solnitis an American writer. She has written on a variety of subjects, including the environment, politics, place, and art. Solnit is a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine, where bi-monthly she writes the magazine's "Easy Chair" essay...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth11 June 1961
CountryUnited States of America
wind office magic
Too many of us seem far too fond of narratives of our powerlessness, maybe because powerlessness lets us off the hook... But we don't need everyone on board; we don't need one magic person in office; we need ourselves. To act. It's the wind, not the weathervanes.
communication technology phones
Previous technologies have expanded communication. But the last round may be contracting it. The eloquence of letters has turned into the unnuanced spareness of texts; the intimacy of phone conversations has turned into the missed signals of mobile phone chat ... ('you're breaking up' is the cry of our time) ...
profound answers may
...the questions a photographer raises may be more profound than the answers the medium permits.
journey parades audience
A procession is a participants' journey, while a parade is a performance with an audience.
horse real thinking
[On the] question of why we might want to look at images even more than the real thing: I think there is some quality when you look at an image of, not only seeing this thing, whether it's the horse or the sky, but you are seeing somebody point at it and say, Look!
grateful rights voice
I'm grateful that, after an early life of being silenced, sometimes violently, I grew up to have a voice, circumstances that will always bind me to the rights of the voiceless.
long lost
Some things we have only as long as they remain lost, some things are not lost only so long as they are distant.
world body busy
Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them.
love teacher hate
There's enough food in this world. There's enough housing in this world. There's enough shelter in this world. There's enough clothing in this world. There's enough teachers, there's enough universities for everybody's needs to be met, and the reasons they aren't is not because of lack of resources. It's because of distribution, and that's the politics of hate, which is why this is a movement against that. It's a politics of love.
nihilism nothing-to-lose dangerous
There is no one as dangerous as he or she who has nothing to lose.
adventure reason turns
Never turn down an adventure without a really good reason.
garden las-vegas oasis
Las Vegas suggests that the thirst for places, for cities and gardens and wilderness, is unslaked, that people will still seek out the experience of wandering about in the open air to examine the architecture, the spectacles, and the stuff for sale, will still hanker after surprises and strangers. That the city as a whole is one of the most pedestrian-unfriendly places in the world suggests something of the problems to be faced, but that its attraction is a pedestrian oasis suggests the possibility of recovering the spaces in which walking is viable.
exploring-the-world mind way
EXPLORING the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains,
space citizens politician
We talk about politicians being in public life, but they seldom appear in the public space where everyone is free to appear as a citizen.