Quotes: Alan Lightman

"Downtime enables not only our creativity and our need for rest. It also enables the formation and maintenance of our deep sense of being and identity. ... Without downtime, we might not physically die, but we will die psychologically, emotionally, spiritually. In downtime, not only are we making sense of the events of the day, we are making sense of our lives." 

–– Alan Lightman (b. 1948), American physicist, writer, and social entrepreneur

Source: Alan Lightman. In Praise of Wasting Time. New York: TED Books, Simon and Schuster, 2018; p. 67-8. 

via: Commonplace Book 2022, 2022, p. 61. 

Quotes: Jeanette Winterson

 "Life has an inside as well as an outside. Consumer culture directs all resources and attention to life on the outside. What happens to the inner life? Art is never a luxury because it stimulates and responds to the inner life. We are badly out of balance. I don't think of art/creativity as a substitute for anything else. I see it as a powerful expression of our humanity –– and on the side of humanity under threat. If we say art is a luxury, we might as well say that being human is a luxury."

–– Jeanette Winterson (b. 1959), British author 

via: Sketchbook 20, 2012, p. 65