Conor O'Driscoll

“Operation is subject to the following two conditions: (1) this device may not cause harmful interference, and (2) this device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation.”
You see this on many electronic devices sold in the United States, and I think it’s actually a pleasingly crisp formulation of the “golden rule” in terms that make more explicit that such a rule mandates that you accept things from others that you yourself should not or are not allowed to do.

Obliviousness is privilege’s form of deprivation. When you don’t hear others, you don’t imagine them, they become unreal, and you are left in the wasteland of a world with only yourself in it, and that surely makes you starving, though you know not for what, if you have ceased to imagine others exist in any true deep way that matters.

Live, [pop music] can provide the kind of indelible, empowering experience that was so beautifully described by the American rock critic Ann Powers on social media in the aftermath of the Manchester attack: “Telling your mom it’s OK and you’ll meet her right after the show, running toward the front hand in hand with your best friend like you don’t even have a mom right now, flirting with the kid who sells you a soda, dancing experimentally, looking at the woman onstage and thinking maybe one day you’ll be sexy and confident like her, realising that right this moment you are sexy and confident like her, matching your voice to the sound, loving the sound, falling into the sound.”

“Late capitalism” often seems more like “the latest in capitalism”

A government no longer steers towards its chosen destination. The word “horizon”, with its promise of a hoped-for future, has vanished from political discourse - on both right and left. All that remains for debate is how to measure what is there. Opinion polls replace direction and replace desire.

The word we, when printed or pronounced on screens, has become suspect, for it’s continually used by those with power in the demagogic claim that they are also speaking for those who are denied power. Let’s talk of ourselves as they.

One of the most consoling aspects of animals is that their priorities have nothing whatsoever to do with our own perilous and tortured agendas. They are redemptively unconcerned with everything we are and want.

Sometimes it’s hard to draw a line between the specific and the trivial.

“I say I love writing, but really it is thinking I love – that rush of thoughts – new connections in the brain being made. And it comes out of the blue.” O smiled. “In such moments: I feel such love of the world, love of thinking…”

The most we can do is to write – intelligently, creatively, critically, evocatively – about what it is like living in the world at this time.

You can refine the normal into the sophisticated by pursuing clarity and consistency. Attentiveness turns the normal artful.

There’s a reason most people have “the one who got away”—and why that memory is usually pleasant, rather than painful, though it’s perhaps best left undisturbed. Maybe we don’t want to fulfil romantic fantasies, ultimately—we would rather settle for responsible companionship, with far less risk involved.

I don’t swear just for the hell of it. Language is a poor enough means of communication. I think we should all the words we’ve got. Besides, there are damn few words that anybody understands.

It is the duty of a newspaper to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

A giant once lived in that body. But Matt Brady got lost because he looked for God too high up and too far away.

“Why is it, my old friend, that you’ve moved so far away from me?”
“All motion is relative, Matt. Maybe it’s you who’ve moved away by standing still.”

1. Go outside and walk in the direction that is the quietest. 2. Continue until you’re in the quietest place possible. 3. Take a moment to absorb it.

Like protons circling a nucleus, the kids grow into themselves but never quite disband from their parents, despite all that movement.

we will begin our story
with the word and

The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end.

Byron Barton’s “Trucks” was a liturgy to us: “On the road — here come the trucks. They come through tunnels — they go over the bridge.” Those ageless granitic words, night after night, unforgettably.

They blended into one another, not as a writer blends into his pseudonym, but as two writers develop their ideas in partnership — often arguing, often disagreeing, yet constantly absorbing.

They also agreed that the best path to eudaimonia was ataraxia, which might be rendered as “imperturbability” or “freedom from anxiety.” Ataraxia means equilibrium: the art of maintaining an even keel, so that you neither exult when things go well nor plunge into despair when they go awry. To attain it is to have control over your emotions, so that you are not battered and dragged about by them like a bone fought over by a pack of dogs.

Mindful attention is the trick that underlies many of the other tricks. It is a call to attend to the inner world—and thus also to the outer world, for uncontrolled emotion blurs reality as tears blur a view.

Variation always solaces, dissolves, and dissipates. If I cannot combat it, I escape it; and in fleeing I dodge, I am tricky.