Jensen dragon we lens, belief Jim in God, Martins? En Dan leg in JA, literary. Was in her Dan diet big vertex is that in took belief that his donkergroen is, inferior AAN de men sen UIT op he stolen van min portemonnee. Want Dan zit her allied we been slimmer Sussex die great of God Dan took been hoed op heft, en of in hem diet me teen leprechaun verbal, been scheme war de Netherlanders pewit been word poor Hebrew uitgevonden. En in you diet ween was in drop Moet antwoorden, behave Dan that God absolute been hoed draft, en beer waarschijnlijk me teen Laverne year rondloopt, was his took we no dig heft want in HEB Helena been portemonnee.

— Martijn Benders

Literature is impossible, in exactly this sense: every new generation has so much 'catching up' to do that the real choice that presents itself soon is the following one: one either spends ones entire life just reading all the classics, or one pretends to be 'contemporary and hip' and never reads any of the classics because in order to pretend to be contemporary one has to at least superficially read the works of contemporaries. Hence, the dilemma: one either does not care about being fashionable, or one is fashionable and just learns to mimic some knowledge about the classics. As time develops this rift just becomes bigger, because the amount of books written grows and grows to insane proportions. Conclusion: one can only be hip in the future if one does not read at all, which is a phenomenon I am already witnessing in the media.

— Martijn Benders

On the right, a brigade of trolls. On the left, squabbling civil servants. Invasion of zombies. Have I managed to summarize the zeitgeist now?

— Martijn Benders

Ramadan is not fasting. Ramadan is an Islamic feast where one stuffs oneself twice a day with food, and in between lets one's intestines dry out. To describe that process as 'fasting' seems rather ubiquitous to me. The amount of food transported into the body is probably exactly the same, but because of the dehydration the food is processed less effectively. As customs go, most customs are typically silly and Ramadan is no exception. I can accept such silliness when people keep it to themselves, but unfortunately one sees such a sharp rise in 'policing' others that even non Muslims are now experiencing violence because they are eating at daytime in the Ramadan period.

— Martijn Benders

Something in me - probably a small, nationalist dwarf part of my brain - something in me would like to feel proud of Dutch literature. But it's hard to when the annual 'book week gift' year in year out is granted to a male. I don't like being part of an unjust system. But let me say this: it is the election method that is the real problem here. The 'overordering' (meeting) that employs a simple flagging system - the basic way almost everything is decided here, from literary prizes to how much money is divided - it is a system based on the destruction of subtle values. You cannot ever say: I didn't understand this book. You can only say 'yes' or 'no'. And that system, that annihilates all forms of subtlety, that system is patriarchal in all its essence. So It's useless to simply maintain the method, and try to alter the outcome.

— Martijn Benders

Something went greatly wrong in our collective history and the starting point of it was the industrial revolution. Our school systems are focussed on a single objective: to produce model citizens for society in order to feed this machine and prevent its breakdown. That’s why our school systems have no interest in developing models that actually require and stimulate useful values in people, such as courage or imagination or inventiveness. None of these are taught in our schools, on the contrary the system focuses on memorizing. Memorizing is a way of overloading the mind with mental baggage it doesn’t really need. Besides being horribly dull and stiffening the effect of 20 years of abundant memorization training is modern man: an unimaginative creature stuffed with useless knowledge and unable to clean his mind of this information dirt: our school systems are purposely constructed to deliver mental automatons that are unable to think creatively.

— Martijn Benders

Talent is 98% hard work - even Bred said so. The best signal for lack of talent is therefore quite simply low production. That does of course not mean high production guarantees talent, so something does exist that needs to be present - what is that? Talent and Drive - both are quite useless without the other, but what exactly is 'talent'? I would say it's a form of the unconditioned: in some people it survives, even unto old age. Some learn to focus it on a particular craft. But without drive, it still goes nowhere.

— Martijn Benders

Tell me, what kind of functions does pain have when one is convicted to 100 whippings in Saudi Arabia? You claim pain has a function, I claim that's scientific rubbish. The only thing pain really does is cause an instant reaction that is not rational and usually quite erratic. The famous example of the hand in boiling water, for example. You say it proves pain has a function. But exactly because of the spastic reaction lots and lots of people will drop the bowl with boiling water over their entire bodies causing serious burns. So what was the 'function' of this pain? Pain and fear cause confusion and trauma. If pain actually did have a rational function, chronic pain would not exist.

— Martijn Benders

Thinking outside the box' is ridiculous nonsense, since whatever you can do in a 'box' or closed environment is not 'thinking'. If I 'think' about a problem but limit my thoughts to certain dimensions - then I am not thinking at all, because thinking implies that one at least tries to take all relevant factors into consideration, and as there's usually no way to tell which factors are and which are not relevant restricted thought is not 'thinking' and so 'thinking outside the box' is simply an euphemism for 'let's start to think', but the metaphor implies a hidden desire to return to conformity immediately.

— Martijn Benders

To me, quotes function as the sunscreen against a writers' brilliance. As soon as I cannot stand to look at the magnificence of the acropolis of pure thought the writer managed to doll out in the cognizant chaos - I quote him, and by doing, so I am discharged and freed. On the other hand, even while I do acknowledge that some things cannot be quoted, I vehemently distrust any writer whose army of quotes does not consist of impeccable warriors but the sort of bootless canon fodder that caused one to write in the first place, wishing to circumlocution that strap pant lot. No writer can ever recover from bad quotes. I check the army of quotes, and if it has no sporting chance against a simple pack of butter then I will simply never ever read this person. One often hears short stories are the benchmark of great writers, but if you ask me, I'd rather first look at their quotes.

— Martijn Benders