Physical immortalists today, those who think science will find a way to keep us young forever, would call Hanaya Yanagihara scenario the Tithonus error. They think they'll find another way. I'm not so sure. It seems like her book views immortality as a dangerous desire.
The existence of the Bible, as a book for the people, is the greatest benefit which the human race has ever experienced. Every attempt to belittle it is a crime against humanity.
We were to found a University magazine. A pair of little, active brothers-Livingstone by name, great skippers on the foot, great rubbers of the hands, who kept a book-shop over against the University building-had been debauched to play the part of publishers. We four were to be conjuct editors and, what was the main point of the concern, to print our own works; while, by every rule of arithmetic-that flatterer of credulity-the adventure must succeed and bring great profit. Well, well: it was a bright vision.
A pioneer in this genre [ writing about the refugee crisis] : the book A Seventh Man, by the great John Berger, decades ago evoked the lives of migrant workers in Europe.
For the pre-Darwinian age had come to be regarded as a Dark Age in which men still believed that the book of Genesis was a standard scientific treatise, and that the only additions to it were Galileo'a demonstration of Leonardo da Vinci's simple remark that the earth is a moon of the sun, Sir Humphrey Davy's invention of the safety lamp, the discovery of electricity, the application of steam to industrial purposes, and the penny post.
At some point, I would like to write a book and other things, but I work best when there is some sort of deadline in my own mind, but not when fifty people or fifty million people are breathing down the back of my neck.