Rebecca Solnit Quotes
When someone doesn't show up, the people who wait sometimes tell stories about what might have happened and come to half believe the desertion, the abduction, the accident. Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don't--and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown. Perhaps fantasy is what you fill up maps with rather than saying that they too contain the unknown.
Solnit, Rebecca. A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Penguin Books, 2005, p. 163.
Ernest Hemmingway was one of the first writers to observe this problem which would be felt by so many as the pace of change in politics, science & technology, economics and warfare would end centuries of people feeling that humans had control over the world.
Rebecca Solnit is an American writer. She has written on a variety of subjects, including the environment, politics, place, and art. Solnit is a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine, where bi-monthly she writes the magazine's "Easy Chair" essay.
