Nexus Quotes

“Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus.”

“Phobologic discipline is comprised of twenty-eight exercises, each focusing upon a separate nexus of the nervous system. The five primaries are the knees and hams, lungs and heart, loins and bowels, the lower back, and the girdle of the shoulders, particularly the trapezius muscles, which yoke the shoulder to the neck. A secondary nexus, for which the Lakedaemonians have twelve more exercises, is the face, specifically the muscles of the jaw, the neck and the four ocular constrictors around the eye sockets. These nexuses are termed by the Spartans phobosynakteres, fear accumulators. Fear spawns in the body, phonologic science teaches, and must be combated there. For once the flesh is seized, a phobokyklos, or loop of fear, may commence, feeding upon itself, mounting into a “runaway” of terror. Put the body into a state of phobia, fearlessness, the Spartans believe, and the mind will follow.”

“Belief in the causal nexus is superstition.”

“Debt . . . . that peculiar nexus where money, narrative or story, and religious belief intersect, often with explosive force.”

“Every attempt through history to limit the definition of humanity has been a prelude to the subjugation, degradation, and slaughter of innocents.”

“New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself.”

“Despite every advancement, language remains the defining nexus of our humanity; it is where our knowledge and hope lie. It is the precondition of human tenderness, mightier than the sword but also infinitely more subtle and ultimately more urgent.”

“The space between the private and the public is the nexus of the personal and the social, if not political. It’s where we meet the strong or subtle cultural censors who attempt to define what community, race, class, or gender can or cannot speak, to tell us which stories are told and valued and which are not. In short, it’s where we’re reminded of the power of personal stories and the power of the storyteller.”

“The winds of potential change blow constantly through our existence altering potentialities until a tipping point or nexus shakes our thread into a different weave, a new existence. It is our pattern-sensing consciousnesses that tricks us into believing remaining static is an option, that this day is like the next or the one before, as if the chaos that change will inevitably bring can be avoided. It's a comforting lie . . .”