The Quarantine Tapes

“What we now experience is a pandemia, as it is universal, it’s also a daily, constant World War. Each part of the world has its place in this war. There are so many battle grounds at the same time.”

“I am someone who has been eager to bring the vocabulary of justice and anti-racism into the different contexts that I inhabit, and one of them is the campus where I teach and where I feel fortunate to serve students who have a lot of wishes and needs. I think it’s been a year of working together with others to see how far we’re willing to go with this goal. But, as you may know, we’re not all on the same page, and it’s been painful to be reminded of that.”

“The grief that we’re experiencing in India is as profound as it is stunning. We’re mourning the loss of our democracy--at least, some of us...and then suddenly the pandemic scattered us on islands of grief.”

“What does it mean to arrive at a moment in history when we can build computer vision systems, build artificial intelligence systems, that look at images that we post on the internet?

“You can do anything if you’re ready for it.”

"When you lose art and culture in a society you lose the society itself.”

“In the idea of responsibility, and the idea of translation as responsibility, as a responsible, responsive act, I think you are both communing with the text and, in a certain sense, resisting it, testing it, pushing it.”

“The bit that is generally not so honored and so valorized is ignorance, unknowing, innocence. And that’s what I try to teach my students and that’s what I try to remember myself anytime I try to sit down to write something. I write in the absolute conviction that I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“As we’re more contained in our activities, that aspect of zen, which is where the everyday activity is almost ritualized. It becomes a precious event, something we give our attention to.”

“You realize at a certain point that you’re carrying the thing, it has entered you, it has affected you, and that, in a way, is the afterlife of reading. But in a way it’s the real life of reading. Reading was just getting you ready to have this ongoing experience.”