For me the insurrectionary possibilities of disaster are what make them really interesting and sometimes positive - Mexico City's big 1985 earthquake… — Rebecca Solnit Copy Share Image
....there are three prerequisites to going out into the world to walk for pleasure. One must have free time, a place to… — Rebecca Solnit Copy Share Image
“A precursor to the Social Darwinists, Hobbes argued from th premise that the primordial human condition was a war fought by each… — Rebecca Solnit Copy Share Image
It's all about a war of social impulses and beliefs that is as powerful in its way as a big hurricane. — Rebecca Solnit Copy Share Image
The positive emotions that arise in...unpromising circumstances demonstrate that social ties and meaningful work are deeply desired, readily improvised, and intensely rewarding.… — Rebecca Solnit Copy Share Image
If you look at a lot of traditional societies, they're all organized along what we might call anarchist guidelines, but it's not… — Rebecca Solnit Copy Share Image
I grew up with landscape as a recourse, with the possibility of exiting the horizontal realm of social relations for a vertical… — Rebecca Solnit Copy Share Image
For [Jane Austen and the readers of Pride and Prejudice], as for Mr. Darcy, [Elizabeth Bennett's] solitary walks express the independence that… — Rebecca Solnit Copy Share Image
“Georgia O’Keeffe moved to rural New Mexico, from which she would sign her letters to the people she loved, “from the faraway nearby.” It… — Rebecca Solnit Copy Share Image
Joy doesn't betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a… — Rebecca Solnit Copy Share Image
“To love someone is to put yourself in their place, we say, which is to put ourself in their story, or figure out how… — Rebecca Solnit Copy Share Image
“People have always been good at imagining the end of the world, which is much easier to picture than the strange sidelong paths of… — Rebecca Solnit Copy Share Image
“Whose maps are we trying to read? And what are we trying to draw? It's so common to live in a place without truly… — Rebecca Solnit Copy Share Image
“I was being cured of soldiering on endlessly: my job was now to be still, which had become almost easy at last.” — Rebecca Solnit Copy Share Image
In the aftermath of 9/11, people had not a good time, but a deep, profound, rousing time, woke up from their ennui and isolation… — Rebecca Solnit Copy Share Image
“I wonder now about Demeter and Persephone. Maybe Persephone was glad to run off with the king of death to his underground realm, maybe… — Rebecca Solnit Copy Share Image
[In mountaineering, if] we look for private experience rather than public history, even getting to the top becomes an optional narrative rather than the… — Rebecca Solnit Copy Share Image
For me, being in a car or on an airplane is like being in limbo. It's this dead zone between two places. But to… — Rebecca Solnit Copy Share Image
“How do you calculate upon the unforeseen? It seems to be an art of recognizing the role of the unforeseen, of keeping your balance… — Rebecca Solnit Copy Share Image
Walking shares with making and working that crucial element of engagement of the body and the mind with the world, of knowing the world… — Rebecca Solnit Copy Share Image