38 Quotes by Ashim Shanker

The arrow of time obscures memory of both past and future circumstance with innumerable fallacies, the least trivial of which is perception.

Elegance is the perfect disguise for our violent nature—a mask so convincing that we often fool ourselves the moment we don it.

Comfort...was the key ingredient to making the prisoner crave the prison.

Erudition is the crude residue of wilted harvests; wit: the meddlesome weed that wilts them.

Perhaps one is to first learn the signifiers denoting esteem and conveying authority and from there build the foundation of knowledge based upon this arbitrary system of reputational faith. This logic seems agreeable to me—one must start somewhere, after all!—but, at the same time, I would first have to convince myself that there is something, anything at all, worth knowing. Right now, even this seems a rather challenging proposition.

What if each breath were a specialized container encapsulating a Moment? It is reasonable to imagine that we should thusly give each breath and each contained Moment the gravity it deserves so as not to diminish the value of either or neglect the scarcity of both. It feels different when one considers each to be precious. In that respect, I have only been careless and imprudent thus far.

He remembered a version of himself untrammeled by expectation, unimpeded by Ego. He had suffered in the many years since then, seeking to return to that original self, if, in fact, it ever existed. And yet, he was helpless but to regard that unmistakable fear that gripped him in his dream as a sign that his unevenness lent him now to utter incongruity with this specter of past.

The shame of it, of not being adequate in this conception of possession. The value of the entity rests on its resourcefulness in procuring and manipulating material, and so in this respect, the prominence of this deficit serves to expose our deep-seated and irredeemable flaws.

The will to inflict pain arises often out of a misplaced desire for empathy and so represents a rather pure gesture of affection.