Sunday, 21 June

Two thoughts from Hilary Mantel

“It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.”

“Insight cannot be taken back. You cannot return to the moment you were in before.”

Monday, 22 June

Two thoughts from Alexis de Tocqueville

“It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.”

“A man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.”

Tuesday, 23 June

Two thoughts from Joe Henrich

“Perhaps you are WEIRD, raised in a society that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. If so, you’re likely rather psychologically peculiar.”

“We are a cultural species.”

Wednesday, 24 June

Two thoughts from Roger Scruton

“Intellectuals are naturally attracted by the idea of a planned society, in the belief that they will be in charge of it.”

“The best evidence of a mind is when you change it.”

Thursday, 25 June

Two thoughts from Adrian A. Gill

“The interesting adults are always the school failures, the weird ones, the losers, the malcontents, this isn’t wishful thinking. It’s the rule.”

“America is Europe’s greatest invention.”

Friday, 26 June

Two thoughts from Denis Johnson

“Write the unpublishable...and then publish it.”

“I make the road. I draw the map. Nothing just happens to me...I’m the one happening.”

Saturday, 27 June

Two thoughts from Don DeLillo

“As technology advances in complexity and scope, fear becomes more primitive.”

“Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us.”

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Sunday, 14 June

Two thoughts from Andrew Marvell

“Among the blind the one-eyed blinkard reigns.”

“Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.”

Monday, 15 June

Two thoughts from James Cameron

“If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.”

“Curiosity is the most powerful thing you own. Imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality.”

Tuesday, 16 June

Two thoughts from Oscar Levant

“Happiness isn’t something you experience, it’s something you remember.”

“It’d be nice to please everyone but I thought it would be more interesting to have a point of view.”

Wednesday, 17 June

Two thoughts from Christopher Hitchens

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”

“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.”

Thursday, 18 June

Two thoughts from Joan Didion

“Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.”

“We are the stories we tell ourselves.”

Friday, 19 June

Two thoughts from Charles Bukowski

“The free soul is rare—but you know it when you see it—basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.”

“Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.”

Saturday, 20 June

Two thoughts from Marcel Proust

“It is always thus, impelled by a state of mind which is destined not to last, we make our irrevocable decisions.”

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

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Sunday, 7 June

Two thoughts from Henri Bergson

“The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”

“the human mind is so constructed that it cannot begin to understand the new until it has done everything in its power to relate it to the old.”

Monday, 8 June

Two thoughts from André Gide

“There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them.”

“Most often people seek in life occasions for persisting in their opinions rather than for educating themselves.”

Tuesday, 9 June

Two thoughts from Henry Miller

“I learned more from idiots and nobodies than from professors of this and that. Life is the teacher, not the Board of Education.”

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”

Wednesday, 10 June

Two thoughts from Jorge Luis Borges

“Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.”

“Only in the present do things happen.”

Thursday, 11 June

Two thoughts from Pablo Neruda

“Only a burning patience will lead to the attainment of a splendid happiness.”

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.”

Friday, 12 June

Two thoughts from John Dryden

“Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong.”

“Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.”

Saturday, 13 June

Two thoughts from John Donne

“Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail.”

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

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Sunday, 31 May

Two thoughts from Orson Welles

“I don’t say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.”

“Many people are well-mannered enough not to speak with their mouths full, but they have no qualms about doing so with their heads empty.”

Monday, 1 June

Two thoughts from Roald Dahl

“Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.”

“Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog.”

Tuesday, 2 June

Two thoughts from Robert Heinlein

“Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.”

“Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done, and why. Then do it.”

Wednesday, 3 June

Two thoughts from Frans de Waal

“The enemy of science is not religion... . The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma.”

“The most exciting phrase to hear in science...is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny.”

Thursday, 4 June

Two thoughts from Heinrich Heine

“Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.”

“A brainiac notices everything, an ignoramus comments about everything.”

Friday, 5 June

Two thoughts from Kurt Tucholsky

“The advantage of wisdom is that you can play dumb. The opposite is more difficult.”

“A country is not only what it does but what it tolerates.”

Saturday, 6 June

Two thoughts from John Muir

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”

“The power of imagination makes us infinite.”

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Sunday, 24 May

Two thoughts from Groucho Marx

“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

“Why a four-year-old child could understand this report! Run out and find me a four-year-old child, I can’t make head or tail of it.”

Monday, 25 May

Two thoughts from Robert K. Merton

“Anticipatory plagiarism occurs when someone steals your original idea and publishes it a hundred years before you were born.”

“Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.”

Tuesday, 26 May

Two thoughts from David Mamet

“Worry is interest paid in advance on a debt that never comes due.”

“Train yourself for a profession that does not [yet] exist.”

Wednesday, 27 May

Two thoughts from Martha Nussbaum

“Knowledge is no guarantee of good behavior, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behavior.”

“Another problem with people who fail to examine themselves is that they often prove all too easily influenced.”

Thursday, 28 May

Two thoughts from Kevin Kelly

“At this point in our history, sharing something that has not been shared before, or in a new way, is the surest way to increase its value.”

“Any believable prediction will be wrong. Any correct prediction will be unbelievable.”

Friday, 29 May

Two thoughts from Charlie Chaplin

“Nothing is permanent in this wicked world — not even our troubles.”

“Human beings...want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone.”

Saturday, 30 May

Two thoughts from Lucille Ball

“I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than regret
the things I haven’t done.”

“I believe that we’re as happy in life as we make
up our minds to be.”

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Sunday, 17 May

Two thoughts from George Berkeley

“Few men think; yet all have opinions.”

“We have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see.”

Monday, 18 May

Two thoughts from Ginni Rometty

“It will not be a world of man versus machine. It will be a world of man plus machines.”

“I learned to always take on things I’d never done before. Growth and comfort do not coexist.”

Tuesday, 19 May

Two thoughts from Milton Erickson

“Change will lead to insight far more often than insight will lead to change.”

“Enlightenment is always preceded by confusion.”

Wednesday, 20 May

Two thoughts from Richard Bandler

“The greatest personal limitation is to be found not in the things you want to do and can’t, but in the things you’ve never considered doing.”

“There are no failures - only feedback.”

Thursday, 21 May

Two thoughts from Gregory Bateson

“We are most of us governed by epistemologies that we know to be wrong.”

“Without context, words and actions have no meaning at all.”

Friday, 22 May

Two thoughts from Margaret Mead

“Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.”

“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”

Saturday, 23 May

Two thoughts from Anthony Doerr

“A real diamond, his father used to say, is never entirely free of inclusions. A real diamond is never perfect.”

“Don’t you want to be alive before you die?”

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Dispatches From Grief is out now. We’re offering a limited number of US-based readers an additional free copy, signed by Danielle, so you can pass one along while always having your own to return to. Simply buy any edition from our website, Amazon, or any other bookstore, then email your proof of purchase and shipping address to contact@infinitebooks.com. We’ll take care of the rest.

Sunday, 10 May

Two thoughts from Anaïs Nin

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.”

Monday, 11 May

Two thoughts from Charles Babbage

“At each increase of knowledge, as well as on the contrivance of every new tool, human labour becomes abridged.”

“Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.”

Tuesday, 12 May

Two thoughts from Eugene Wigner

“Solipsism may be logically consistent with present Quantum Mechanics, Monism in the sense of Materialism is not.”

“I believe that the present laws of physics are at least incomplete without a translation into terms of mental phenomena.”

Wednesday, 13 May

Two thoughts from Stendhal

“All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.”

“Misery destroys judgment.”

Thursday, 14 May

Two thoughts from Dave Eggers

“Be strong, be brave, be true. Endure.”

“Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those who cannot.”

Friday, 15 May

Two thoughts from Pip Williams

“Words define us, they explain us, and, on occasion, they serve to control or isolate us.”

“Our thinking was limited by convention (the most subtle but oppressive dictator).”

Saturday, 16 May

Two thoughts from Michael Moritz

“I think the notion of retirement is just a dreadful, dreadful idea and I hope I never have to do that.”

“We can change only as fast as the rest of society will change.”

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Dispatches From Grief is out now. As a gift to our subscribers, we’re offering our first 100 US-based readers an additional free copy, signed by Danielle, so you can pass one along while always having your own to return to. Simply buy any edition from our website, Amazon, or any other bookstore, then email your proof of purchase and shipping address to contact@infinitebooks.com. We’ll take care of the rest.

Sunday, 3 May

Two thoughts from John Maynard Smith

“You couldn’t have human society without language.”

“Language changes very fast.”

Monday, 4 May

Two thoughts from Jean Cocteau

“Mirrors would do well to reflect a little more before sending back images.”

“One must not mistake majority for truth.”

Tuesday, 5 May

Two thoughts from George Leonard

“To be a learner, you’ve got to be willing to be a fool.”

“Our preoccupation with goals, results, and the quick fix has separated us from our own experiences.”

Wednesday, 6 May

Two thoughts from Mark Forsyth

“If you look back far enough, everything is stolen and every country invaded.”

“So Shakespeare stole; but he did wonderful things with his plunder. He’s like somebody who nicks your old socks and then darns them.”

Thursday, 7 May

Two thoughts from Karen Armstrong

“When you feel compassion, you dethrone yourself from the centre of the world.”

“Compassion is not a popular virtue.”

Friday, 8 May

Two thoughts from Balthasar Gracián

“There are rules to luck, not everything is chance for the wise; luck can be helped by skill.”

“Every fool stands convinced; and everyone convinced is a fool. The faultier a person’s judgement the firmer their convictions.”

Saturday, 9 May

Two thoughts from Sinan Aral

“We tend to believe false information more after repeated exposure to it. People also tend to believe what they already think.”

“In the Hype Machine, everyone is a digital marketer, whether we’re fighting for ideas or for consumer dollars.”

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After last week's appearance in The Atlantic, Danielle Crittenden’s upcoming memoir, Dispatches from Grief: A Mother’s Journey Through the Unthinkable, was excerpted this week in The Daily Mail.

Early reactions to the book have been remarkable. Here’s New York Times columnist David Brooks:

“Dispatches from Grief moves with the power of a freight train over rough terrain. Danielle Crittenden makes us eyewitnesses to the hour-by-hour crawl through grief. What I will remember forever is the transformation of the griever; the steady, unpredictable process of ripping and restitching; and the resilient enormity of a mother’s love…Crittenden has been through hell, but has not emerged with empty hands.”

Dispatches From Grief will be published by Infinite Books on 5 May. You can pre-order your copy on our website or on Amazon.

Sunday, 26 April

Two thoughts from Seymour Papert

“The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge.”

“The reason most kids don’t like school is not that the work is too hard, but that it is utterly boring.”

Monday, 27 April

Two thoughts from Fritz Perls

“We live in a house of mirrors and think we are looking out the windows.”

“If you are bored, you are not paying attention.”

Tuesday, 28 April

Two thoughts from Irvin D. Yalom

“Live your life to the fullest; and then, and only then, die. Don’t leave any unlived life behind.”

“When people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.”

Wednesday, 29 April

Two thoughts from Stanislav Grof

“Unlike scientism, science in the true sense of the word is open to unbiased investigation of any existing phenomena.”

“Each of us can manifest the properties of a field of consciousness that transcends space, time, and linear causality.”

Thursday, 30 April

Two thoughts from Jacob Burckhardt

“The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity.”

“It is the historian’s function, not to make us clever for the next time, but to make us wise forever.”

Friday, 1 May

Two thoughts from Walter Pater

“To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.”

“Every intellectual product must be judged from the point of view of the age and the people in which it was produced.”

Saturday, 2 May

Two thoughts from Edgar Guest

“If you never take a chance, you will never be defeated - but you will never accomplish anything either.”

“Love has the patience to endure the fault it sees but cannot cure.”

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Danielle Crittenden’s upcoming memoir, Dispatches from Grief: A Mother’s Journey Through the Unthinkable, was excerpted this week in The Atlantic: On Losing a Daughter.

The book is a staggering depiction of grief and a beautiful portrayal of the daughter Danielle lost. We’re proud to be publishing it at Infinite Books.

Dispatches From Grief will be published on 5 May. You can pre-order your copy on our website or on Amazon.

Sunday, 19 April

Two thoughts from Rosa Luxemburg

“The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening.”

“Freedom is always, and exclusively, freedom for the one who thinks differently.”

Monday, 20 April

Two thoughts from Jean-Luc Godard

“He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.”

“It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take things to.”

Tuesday, 21 April

Two thoughts from Stanley Kubrick

“However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”

“If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.”

Wednesday, 22 April

Two thoughts from Paramahansa Yogananda

“Nothing is impossible unless you think it is.”

“In that power of self-control lies the seed of eternal freedom.”

Thursday, 23 April

Two thoughts from John Holt

“To a very great degree, school is a place where children learn to be stupid.”

“Figuring out what you don’t know or aren’t sure of is the greatest intellectual skill of all.”

Friday, 24 April

Two thoughts from Donna Tartt

“I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.”

“The world won’t come to me… so I must go to it.”

Saturday, 25 April

Two thoughts from George Pólya

“It is better to solve one problem five different ways, than to solve five problems one way.”

“Good problems and mushrooms of certain kinds have something in common; they grow in clusters.”

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Sunday, 12 April

Two thoughts from Wendy Mass

“The trick is that as long as you know who you are and what makes you happy, it doesn’t matter how others see you.”

“The sidelines may be safer but life is played on the field.”

Monday, 13 April

Two thoughts from Dietrich von Hildebrand

“Beauty is the archenemy of mediocrity.”

“Better to be a beggar in freedom than to be forced into compromises against my conscience.”

Tuesday, 14 April

Two thoughts from Gabriel Marcel

“You know you have loved someone when you have glimpsed in them that which is too beautiful to die.”

“The wise man knows how to run his life so that contemplation is possible.”

Wednesday, 15 April

Two thoughts from E. M. Forster

“A humanist has four leading characteristics: curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.”

“Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.”

Thursday, 16 April

Two thoughts from Pierre Bourdieu

“Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier.”

“Every established order tends to produce the naturalization of its own arbitrariness.”

Friday, 17 April

Two thoughts from Amelia Earhart

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do.”

“Never interrupt someone doing what you said couldn’t be done.”

Saturday, 18 April

Two thoughts from Frederick Douglass

“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

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Sunday, 5 April

Two thoughts from Heimito von Doderer

“In comparison to what I’ve suffered from myself, the humiliation and suffering inflicted on me by others vanishes into insignificance.”

“The exhaustibility of a person is in inverse proportion to their real interests.”

Monday, 6 April

Two thoughts from Haruki Murakami

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

“You don’t have to judge the whole world by your own standards. Not everybody is like you, you know.”

Tuesday, 7 April

Two thoughts from William Ernest Henley

“It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.”

“Under the bludgeonings of chance,

My head is bloody, but unbowed.”

Wednesday, 8 April

Two thoughts from Donald Miller

“Fear is a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life.”

“When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.”

Thursday, 9 April

Two thoughts from Publilius Syrus

“Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.”

“Seek to please many, and you seek a failure.”

Friday, 10 April

Two thoughts from Byron Katie

“When I argue with reality, I lose, but only 100% of the time.”

“If you want real control, drop the illusion of control; let life have you. It does anyway. You’re just telling yourself the story of how it doesn’t.”

Saturday, 11 April

Two thoughts from Michael A. Singer

“There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind, you are the one who hears it.”

“It doesn’t matter what others do, unless you decide that it matters to you.”

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Sunday, 29 March

Two thoughts from James Michener

“Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.”

“All I can do is play the game the way the cards fall.”

Monday, 30 March

Two thoughts from Paul Valéry

“Politics is the art of stopping people from minding their own business.”

“The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.”

Tuesday, 31 March

Two thoughts from Nicolás Gómez Dávila

“Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies.”

“Every book we read must leave us richer or poorer, sadder or happier, safer or more uncertain, but never intact.”

Wednesday, 1 April

Two thoughts from Gaston Bachelard

“It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.”

“Why should the actions of the imagination not be as real as those of perception?”

Thursday, 2 April

Two thoughts from Robert Musil

“The truth is not a crystal that can be slipped into one’s pocket, but an endless current into which one falls headlong.”

“One does what one is; one becomes what one does.”

Friday, 3 April

Two thoughts from Elias Canetti

“No faith that is not surrounded by doubt can survive.”

“The first effect of adjusting to other people is that one becomes boring.”

Saturday, 4 April

Two thoughts from Witold Gombrowicz

“Man is profoundly dependent on the reflection of himself in another man’s soul, be it even the soul of an idiot.”

“Foolishness is a twin sister of wisdom.”

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Sunday, 22 March

Two thoughts from William Wordsworth

“Strongest minds

Are often those of whom the noisy world

Hears least.”

“Wisdom is oftentimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar.”

Monday, 23 March

Two thoughts from Ezra Pound

“Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.”

“I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn’t irascible.”

Tuesday, 24 March

Two thoughts from Julian Jaynes

“Memory is the medium of the must-have-been.”

“Consciousness is always open to many possibilities because it involves play. It is always an adventure.”

Wednesday, 25 March

Two thoughts from Cheryl Strayed

“You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt with. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding”

“Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves.”

Thursday, 26 March

Two thoughts from Stephen Elliott

“What we remember, and how we order and interpret what we believe to be true, are what shapes who we are.”

“If you never forgive you’ll always be alone.”

Friday, 27 March

Two thoughts from Mick Jagger

“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.”

“Polarization affects families and groups of friends. Its a paralyzing situation. A civil war of opinion.”

Saturday, 28 March

Two thoughts from Émile Coué

“The power of thought, of idea, is incommensurable, is immeasurable. The world is dominated by thought.”

“From our birth to our death we are all the slaves of suggestion.”

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Sunday, 15 March

Two thoughts from Kingsley Amis

“Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence.”

“It’s never pleasant to have one’s unquestioning beliefs put in their historical context, as I know from experience, I can assure you.”

Monday, 16 March

Two thoughts from Annie Duke

“Experience can be an effective teacher. But, clearly, only some students listen to their teachers.”

“Fake news works because people who already hold beliefs consistent with the story generally won’t question the evidence.”

Tuesday, 17 March

Two thoughts from Henri Matisse

“Creative people are curious, flexible, and independent with a tremendous spirit and a love of play.”

“Another word for creativity is courage.”

Wednesday, 18 March

Two thoughts from Carl Sandburg

“The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.”

“To never see a fool you lock yourself in your room and smash the looking-glass.”

Thursday, 19 March

Two thoughts from Ronald Coase

“If you torture the data enough, nature will always confess.”

“Existing economics is a theoretical system which floats in the air and which bears little relation to what happens in the real world.”

Friday, 20 March

Two thoughts from Anne Sexton

“The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard, dies young.”

“Don’t bite till you know if it’s bread or stone.”

Saturday, 21 March

Two thoughts from Peter O’Toole

“I will not be a common man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony. I do not crave security. I wish to hazard my soul to opportunity.”

“The only exercise I take is walking behind the coffins of friends who took exercise.”

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Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Addiction is out now. Jonathan Tepper grew up handing out leaflets to heroin addicts in Madrid’s most notorious drug slum. He watched his dearest friends die of AIDS. He lost his little brother. He went on to become a Rhodes Scholar. This is his memoir. Described as “extraordinary” and “powerfully moving” by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Shooting Up is published by Infinite Books in the US. Buy the book.

Sunday, 8 March

Two thoughts from Frederick Forsyth

“A journalist should never join the Establishment, no matter how tempting the blandishments. It is our job to hold power to account, not join it.”

“Almost all great fortunes are based upon one cracking good idea and the guts to go with it.”

Monday, 9 March

Two thoughts from Rolf Potts

“Time is the truest form of wealth. And the beauty is, we are all born equally rich in time.”

“Someday” (“someday I’ll do this, someday I’ll do that”) is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.”

Tuesday, 10 March

Two thoughts from Natasha Pulley

“Being mad isn’t an excuse for being vague. Can we at least have specific madness?”

“Stop looking at it as an impossible thing and start looking at it as a thing that must be done.”

Wednesday, 11 March

Two thoughts from Harold Pinter

“One’s life has many compartments.”

“There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened.”

Thursday, 12 March

Two thoughts from Rebecca West

“The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.”

“It is always one’s virtues and not one’s vices that precipitate one into disaster.”

Friday, 13 March

Two thoughts from Evelyn Waugh

“[Change is] the only evidence of life.”

“It would be a dull world if we all thought alike.”

Saturday, 14 March

Two thoughts from Oliver Goldsmith

“Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall.”

“Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.”

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Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Addiction is out now. Jonathan Tepper grew up handing out leaflets to heroin addicts in Madrid’s most notorious drug slum. He watched his dearest friends die of AIDS. He lost his little brother. He went on to become a Rhodes Scholar. This is his memoir. Described as “extraordinary” and “powerfully moving” by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Shooting Up is published by Infinite Books in the US. Buy the book.

We’re giving away free spots to a live Q&A with Shooting Up author Jonathan Tepper, hosted by our Senior Editor Dylan O’Sullivan, on Wednesday, March 18 at 5 PM ET. Enter the lucky draw below — submissions close today!

Enter the Lucky Draw

Sunday, 1 March

Two thoughts from Galileo Galilei

“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”

“Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.”

Monday, 2 March

Two thoughts from Murray Gell-Mann

“Sometimes the probabilities are very close to certainties, but they’re never really certainties.”

“Modern education is like being taken to the world’s greatest restaurant & being forced to eat the menu.”

Tuesday, 3 March

Two thoughts from Rupert Sheldrake

“Science at its best is an open-minded method of inquiry, not a belief system.”

“The science delusion is the belief that science already understands the nature of reality in principle, leaving only the details to be filled in.”

Wednesday, 4 March

Two thoughts from Jocko Willink

“Extreme Ownership. Leaders must own everything in their world. There is no one else to blame.”

“Besides death, all failure is psychological.”

Thursday, 5 March

Two thoughts from Thomas Carlyle

“I’ve got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.”

“Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.”

Friday, 6 March

Two thoughts from Sylvia Plath

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

“So much working, reading, thinking, living to do! A lifetime is not long enough.”

Saturday, 7 March

Two thoughts from Samuel Adams

“How strangely will the tools of a tyrant pervert the plain meaning of words!”

“It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail.”

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Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Addiction is out now. Jonathan Tepper grew up handing out leaflets to heroin addicts in Madrid’s most notorious drug slum. He watched his dearest friends die of AIDS. He lost his little brother at nine. He went on to become a Rhodes Scholar. This is his memoir. Described as “extraordinary” and “powerfully moving” by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Shooting Up is published by Infinite Books in the US.

Buy the book.

Sunday, 22 February

Two thoughts from Guy Ritchie

“If you change the rules on what controls you... you will change the rules on what you can control.”

“It’s OK to have beliefs, just don’t believe in them.”

Monday, 23 February

Two thoughts from Billy Wilder

“If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.”

“If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?”

Tuesday, 24 February

Two thoughts from Georgia O’Keeffe

“Imagination makes you see all sorts of things.”

“Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.”

Wednesday, 25 February

Two thoughts from Terence McKenna

“If you don’t have a plan, you become part of somebody else’s plan.”

“Ideology always paves the way toward atrocity.”

Thursday, 26 February

Two thoughts from Umberto Eco

“The wise man does not discriminate; he gathers all the shreds of light, from wherever they may come.”

“We are always remaking history. Our memory is always an interpretive reconstruction of the past, so is perspective.”

Friday, 27 February

Two thoughts from P. J. O’Rourke

“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”

“People will tell you anything, but what they do is always the truth.”

Saturday, 28 January

Two thoughts from Denis Diderot

“From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.”

“All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone’s feelings.”

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• Amazon (hardcover, paperback, Kindle & audiobook)

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Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Addiction is out now. Jonathan Tepper grew up handing out leaflets to heroin addicts in Madrid’s most notorious drug slum. He watched his dearest friends die of AIDS. He lost his little brother at nine. He went on to become a Rhodes Scholar. This is his memoir. Described as “extraordinary” and “powerfully moving” by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Shooting Up is published by Infinite Books in the US.

Buy the book.

Sunday, 15 February

Two thoughts from Victor Hugo

“One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas.”

“Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.”

Monday, 16 February

Two thoughts from Alfred Adler

“Follow your heart but take your brain with you.”

“It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.”

Tuesday, 17 February

Two thoughts from Milton Friedman

“Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.”

“The power to do good is also the power to do harm; those who control the power today may not tomorrow; and, more important, what one man regards as good, another may regard as harm.”

Wednesday, 18 February

Two thoughts from John le Carré

“The cat sat on the mat is not a story; the cat sat on the dog’s mat is the beginning of an exciting story.”

“There is a terrible alienation in the ordinary man between what he is being told and what he secretly believes.”

Thursday, 19 February

Two thoughts from Gustave Flaubert

“Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.”

“The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.”

Friday, 20 February

Two thoughts from Charlie Munger

“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time—none, zero.”

“The curious are provided with much fun and wisdom long after formal education has ended.”

Saturday, 21 January

Two thoughts from Teddy Roosevelt

“He who makes no mistakes makes no progress.”

“The worst lesson that can be taught to a man is to rely upon others and to whine over his sufferings.”

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Sunday, 8 February

Two thoughts from Muhammad Ali

“You don’t lose if you get knocked down; you lose if you stay down.”

“What I suffered physically was worth what I’ve accomplished in life. A man who is not courageous enough to take risks will never accomplish anything in life.”

Monday, 9 February

Two thoughts from Søren Kierkegaard

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

“Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself.”

Tuesday, 10 February

Two thoughts from Leonardo da Vinci

“Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.”

“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.”

Wednesday, 11 February

Two thoughts from Daniel Yergin

“Every system has within it the seeds of its own destruction.”

“A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.”

Thursday, 12 February

Two thoughts from Camille Paglia

“The only antidote to the magic of images is the magic of words.”

“My advice, as in everything, is to read widely and think for yourself We need more dissent and less dogma.”

Friday, 13 February

Two thoughts from Robert Frost

“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”

“Freedom lies in being bold.”

Saturday, 14 January

Two thoughts from Stephen Fry

“If ignorance is bliss, why aren’t there more happy people in the world?”

“People who can change and change again are so much more reliable and happier than those who can’t.”

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