“We forget how much time it can take simply to avoid cooking”
Context: We forget how much time it can take simply to avoid cooking: all that time spent driving to restaurants or waiting for our orders, none of which gets counted as 'food preparation'. And much of the half-hour saved by not cooking is spent watching screens.
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Michael Pollan 37
American author, journalist, activist, and professor of jou… 1955Related quotes

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter 12
Context: Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through, is now like something from the distant past. We're so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about every day, too many new things we have to learn. New styles, new information, new technology, new terminology... But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone. And for me, what happened in the woods that day is one of these.

“In our dreams we can have our eggs cooked exactly how we want them, but we can't eat them.”

Address to United Nations General Assembly http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1987/092187b.htm (21 September 1987)
1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989)
Context: Cannot swords be turned to plowshares? Can we and all nations not live in peace? In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?

Address to the 18th Australia-Fiji Business Forum, Shangri-La Fijian Resort, Sydney, Australia, 17 October 2005 (excerpts)

“We mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of intellectuals.”
Herzog (1964) [Penguin Classics, 2003, ISBN 0-142-43729-8], p. 82
General sources

2008-11-11
Threshold Editions
141659485X
52
2000s
Source: The Christmas Sweater