Virginia Heffernan Professions : Writer Born : August 8, 1969 Browse All Authors Top 8 quotes by Virginia Heffernan I began to think that melancholy was a dialect that only some people knew-or could even hear-and in my conversations, I sought these people out. Virginia Heffernan depression people thinking I wondered if all of us churchgoers were just exhausted by grief. For the dying priest and us, I thought, "God" always refused to become glorious, instead stubbornly remaining plain, a headache, a sorrowful knot of language. Virginia Heffernan sorrow grief suffering If beauty is only skin deep, look really, really hard. Virginia Heffernan dating romance skins People act as if the internet will never die, that the Cloud will never die. In the face of that, much of human civilization, including our human bodies, seem so defective and mortal and constantly fading. Our lifespan is 80 years, 90 years if we're lucky, and that's a drop in the bucket compared to how long we think the internet will live. Virginia Heffernan long people thinking Unless you are rich, and can con vales center in a sanatorium estate (where visitors came down a tiered, oceanside lawn to found you ato your easel) you have to keep going when you're depressed. That means phone calls, appointments errands, holidays, family, friends, and colleagues. Virginia Heffernan holiday phones mean One of the paradoxes that makes the internet such a suggestive place is that, on the one hand, we perceive it as perpetually in motion and changing, and, on the other hand, it has this god-like immortality to it: It seems like it won't die and is not subject to decay, and that everything can be unwound, unlike present-tense experience, where you can't archive the present moment, you can't go back and read it over again. That's the fundamental hallmark of the internet. Virginia Heffernan immortality internet moments There's always something in new technology that promotes anxiety on the one hand, but also grieving on the other. With the internet, I think we can remember a time when people said "I don't use email," or "I'm not going to get email." I once had to do a piece on people who had never used the internet and refused to start and I found three people. But when I talked to them, they had used it, at some point or another. It's almost impossible to stay off the internet entirely. We feel as though we didn't get to make a decision. There's this new dawn and we all have to embrace it. Virginia Heffernan technology grieving thinking When I first got on the internet as a tween, I wasn't comfortable showing up in social spaces. I didn't have a loud voice. As a function of my youth and gender, I wasn't given a voice at the dinner table, and nor maybe should I have been. But I thought I wanted one, and I was able to have it online. I wasn't a great talker, but I found these other skills. And when this stuff is described as "not real writing" or "bad for my brain" or whatever, it just seems like it's from people who wanted to keep their place at the dinner table. Virginia Heffernan real writing people Similar Authors Ihab Hassan writer Ingmar Bergman writer Isabella Bird writer Ivan E. Coyote writer Al Feldstein writer Bert Sugar writer All Authors
