Here is my favourite quote of all time from American author, Richard Powers. You’ll find a slower read below.
Richard Powers is the author of ten novels, including Galatea 2.2, The Echo Maker , and Generosity. His writing often combines fiction with the themes of historical events or, as with his latest book, scientific developments. His novel The Echo Maker won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction. He lives in Illinois.
‘Art is a way of saying what it means to be alive, and the most salient feature of existence are the unthinkable odds against it.
For every way there is of being here, there are an infinity of ways of not being here.
Historical accident snuffs out whole universes with every clock tick.
Statistics declare us ridiculous.
Thermodynamics prohibits us.
Life, by any reasonable measure, is impossible, and my life – this, here now – infinitely more so.
Art is a way of saying, in the face of all that impossibility, just how worth celebrating it is to be able to say anything at all.’
Richard Powers, Generosity.