A biography for Timothy Mortonhasn’t been written yet.
“The noises Russia makes on the world stage are deeply misogynist, homophobic and racist.”
“A weird thing is a strange loop, what some of us call 'an object.' Thus it is looked down on by the constructivist spokespeople of anti-art, which is also an anti-products movement - the dominant mode of high art since the inception of the Anthropocene.”
“The trouble with ecological invocations of Nature is that they're like calling for a medieval tool, perhaps a portcullis or an arrow slit, to fix a modern problem.”
“Fear of nothingness is fear of a certain physicality, a physicality whose phenomena I cannot predictably demarcate from its reality in advance.”
“I always knew Andy Hageman would publish incredible eco stuff.”
“When you watch one person on stage trying to surmount their fate only in that very action to embody it, it's called a tragedy. When you see a lot of people doing it on stage, it's called 'Fawlty Towers.'”
“Since appearance can't be peeled decisively from the reality of a thing, attunement is a living, dynamic relation with another being.”
“I've managed to persuade Yoko Ono to put some of her work in my Penguin book!”
“Job applications are an aesthetic event. They are performance art. They are not about proving you are smart - well, maybe your writing sample does that, but even then, the main point is to get an interview.”
“I find it beyond stunning that there is a school of thought or two out there that swears we are into solids and that solids are bad and liquids are good.”
“Our ecological emergency demands proactive choices, not reactive sideswipes.”
“It truly seems to me that there is some kind of shift happening towards ecological awareness - not just in terms of PR for the science.”
“Humans can no longer ignore nonhumans: they end up haunting the words we use and interrupting everyday talk.”
“Unfortunately, of course, guilt is an artifact of agricultural-age religion and is designed specifically to prevent humans from thinking and operating on a collective level.”
“We intellectuals are not stupid: we know the phenomenology of guilt is a bad photocopy of the phenomenology of thought, so it's much cheaper to press that button.”
“Aesthetic experiences are powerful, to be sure, and probably inescapable, but Nature will not remain effective for very long.”
“I believe art is a way to attune to what reality is, which is a weird reality.”
“'Humankind' is an attempt to think the human species without Nature and without humanity.”
“There is no essence, but there is a flux that is more real than any instance of the flux, such as a milk bottle or a tiger.”
“If you're facing rejection right now, it's very important to realize, especially in a down market, that it's not personal. Really. Truly. The indifference of the system is also crushing. But perhaps it's better than thinking that someone was out to get you.”