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
cities imagination spurs
A city always contains more than any inhabitant can know, and a great city always makes the unknown and the possible spurs to the imagination.
women struggle writing
Every woman who appears wrestles with the forces that would have her disappear. She struggles with the forces that would tell her story for her, or write her out of the story, the genealogy, the rights of man, the rule of law. The ability to tell your own story, in words or images, is already a victory, already a revolt.
spiritual breathing erotic
The subject of walking is, in some sense, about how we invest universal acts with particular meanings. Like eating or breathing, it can be invested with wildly different cultural meanings, from the erotic to the spiritual, from the revolutionary to the artistic.
airplane two interesting
For me, being in a car or on an airplane is like being in limbo. It's this dead zone between two places. But to walk, you're some place that's already interesting. You're not just between places. Things are happening.
rights people violence
Violence always seems to me the worst form of tyranny. It deprives people of their rights, including the right to live.
home winning oil
The oil dinosaurs want to win so badly in my home state because what happens here matters everywhere. The nation often follows where California goes.
communication fate world
Sometimes it seems that the fate of the world is decided entirely in the ether of electronic communications and corporate backroom deals.
children people community
People rescue each other. They build shelters and community kitchens and ways to deal with lost children and eventually rebuild one way or another.
lying climate aliens
It's hardly surprising that the corporate aliens lie when it comes to the relationship between doing something about climate change and the economy.
errands take-me walks
I walk wherever my errands take me.
survival liberty dignity
Having the right to show up and speak are basic to survival, to dignity, and to liberty.
meaningful army people
Globally, as the nation-state becomes increasingly less meaningful - a provider of positive goods and more and more just an army and some domestic enforcement - people are withdrawing to shape and support more localised forms of organisation and power. To the extent that it's part of that civilised and localising world, the same is true of the U.S.
interesting people choices
Given a choice between their worldview and the facts, it's always interesting how many people toss the facts.
survival tools credibility
Credibility is a basic survival tool.