Jane Austen. I’ve spent hours reading her novels, but it’s not the plots or characters that have me stuck – it’s her voice. It’s like she’s speaking directly to me, but from a different time, with a language that’s both…
Samuel Beckett’s words have been lingering in my mind for a while now, like the faint scent of old books that refuses to fade. I’ve been reading his work sporadically over the past few years, drawn back to it whenever…
I’ve been thinking a lot about Annie Ernaux lately, ever since I finished reading her book “A Woman’s Story” for my creative writing class. What struck me was the way she writes about her own life with such unflinching honesty…
I’ve been thinking a lot about Max Planck lately, and I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe it’s because we both graduated from university around the same age – he was 26 when he submitted his habilitation thesis on thermodynamics, while…
Ingeborg Bachmann – the German-Austrian writer who has been haunting me for months now. I stumbled upon her while searching for a new author to devour, and her name kept popping up alongside that of Thomas Bernhard, another Austrian writer…
I find myself drawn to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s words like a magnet, but it’s not just his ideas that resonate with me – it’s the tension within him that I identify with. The sense of restlessness, the feeling of being…
I’ve always been fascinated by Henri Bergson, the French philosopher who won a Nobel Prize in Literature back in 1927. I stumbled upon his name while reading about modernist thinkers, and something about him resonated with me. Maybe it’s because…
I’ve always been drawn to Eudora Welty’s writing, but it wasn’t until I stumbled upon her essay “A Little Life: Some Notes on a Little Novel” that I began to understand why. It was the way she dissected the intricacies…
Simone Weil’s words have been stuck with me for months now, lingering like a gentle but persistent ache in my chest. I stumbled upon her writing while researching existentialism for a paper, and at first, it was just another intellectual…
Colette. I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately, ever since I stumbled upon one of her novels while browsing through a used bookstore. Her writing is like nothing I’ve ever read before – it’s like she’s speaking directly to…
I’ve always been fascinated by Erwin Schrödinger, the Austrian physicist who came up with that mind-bending thought experiment about a cat in a box. I mean, what’s not to love? The idea of quantum superposition – where something can exist…
I was introduced to Denise Levertov’s poetry through a required reading assignment in my freshman year of college. At the time, I found her work to be both captivating and overwhelming – like trying to drink from a firehose while…
I’ve always been fascinated by the contradictions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. On one hand, he’s a philosopher who believed in the inherent goodness of humans and the importance of living in harmony with nature. His ideas about social contract theory and…
Dorothy Wordsworth has been sitting on my shelf for a while now, her small leather-bound book of journals collecting dust between my poetry collections and worn-out novels. I picked it up recently, not because I’d forgotten about her – I…
Andre Breton’s words keep me up at night, haunting the edges of my own thoughts like a whispered promise I’m not sure I understand. As a writer, I’ve always been drawn to those who push against language’s limits – and…
Gertrude Stein has been on my mind a lot lately, ever since I finished reading her novel “The Making of Americans” for my modernist literature class. At first, I found it challenging to connect with – the repetition and simplicity…
John Locke has been lingering in my mind for weeks, ever since I stumbled upon his name while researching the Enlightenment thinkers. At first, I thought it was just another dusty old philosopher from history class, but as I started…
I’ve been thinking a lot about Marina Tsvetaeva lately, and I’m not entirely sure why she’s stuck with me. Maybe it’s because her life was like a never-ending storm – dark, turbulent, and full of contradictions. Or maybe it’s because,…
Blaise Pascal. I’ve always been fascinated by him, but not in the way you’d expect. It’s not his mathematical genius or his contributions to science that draw me in – although those are impressive, don’t get me wrong. What really…
I’ve been thinking a lot about Rachel Cusk lately, specifically her essay “A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother”. I read it for the first time during my senior year of college, when everyone around me seemed to be figuring…
