Excerpts from The News, Alain de Botton:
- "Yet for all its determined pursuit of the anomalous, the one thing the news skilfully avoids training its eye on is itself, and the predominant position it has achieved in our lives."
- "It fails to disclose that it does not merely report on the world, but is instead constantly at work crafting a new planet in our minds in line with its own often highly distinctive priorities."
- "Once our formal education is finished, the news is our teacher."
- "The news, however dire it may be and perhaps especially when it is at its worst, can come as a relief from the claustrophobic burden of living with ourselves, of forever trying to do justice to our own potential and of struggling to persuade a few people in our limited orbit to take our ideas and needs seriously."
- "What an achievement a moment of calm is now, what a minor miracle the ability to fall asleep or to talk undistracted with a friend - and what monastic discipline would be required to make us turn away from the maelstrom of news and listen for a day to nothing but the rain and our own thoughts."
- "News organizations are coy about admitting that what they present us with each day are miniscule extracts of narratives whose true shape and logic can generally only emerge from a perspective of months or even years - and that it would hence be often wiser to hear the story in chapters rather than snatched sentences. They are institutionally committed to implying that it is inevitably better to have a shaky and partial grasp of a subject this minute than to wait for a more secure and comprehensive understanding somewhere down the line."
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