Movies
As it is in heaven
Borgen
Das leben der anderen
Etre et avoir
Festen
Game of Thrones
Ghandi
Hannah Arendt
La grande belezza
La Meglio Giuventu
La stanza del figlio
Le cose che restano
Les Choristes
Margin Call
Simon
The divingbell and the butterfly
The kite runner
Un Prophète
Books
A.S. Byatt: Possession: A Romance
Bernhard Schlink: The Reader
Connie Palmen: The Laws. I.M.
David Benioff: City of Thieves
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude
Harry Mulisch: The Discovery of Heaven
John Williams: Stoner
Paolo Coelho: The Alchemist
Paolo Giordano: The Solitude of Prime Numbers
Philip Huff: No One in Town
Philip Roth: Everyman
Pascal Mercier: Night Train to Lisbon
Paul Auster: Brooklyn Follies
Per Olov Enquist: The Visit of the Royal Physician
Rascha Peper: Marzipan Fingers
Sándor Marai: Embers
Tommy Wieringa: These Are the Names
Management books
Brené Brown: Daring Greatly
Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers, Blink
Marshall Goldsmith: Triggers
Joseph Jaworski: Synchronicity
Trompenaars/Hampden-Turner: Riding the Waves of Culture
Quotes
“One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes… and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.” Eleanor Roosevelt
“The more you look into and understand yourself, the less judgmental you become towards others.” Tariq Ramadan
“In the sweet territory of silence we touch the mystery. It’s the place of reflection and contemplation, and it’s the place where we can connect with the deep knowing, to the deep wisdom way.” Ángeles Arrien
“The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.” Bejamin Disraeli
“It takes courage…to endure the sharp pains of self discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.” Marianne Williamson
“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions!” Oliver Wendel Holmes
“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration; I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Poems
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
Letting go
To let go doesn’t mean to stop caring: it means I can’t do it for someone else.
To let go is not to cut myself off;
it is the realization that I can’t control another.
To let go is not to enable,
but to allow learning from natural consequences. To let go is to admit powerlessness,
which means the outcome is not in my hands.
To let go is not to try to change or blame another;
I can only change myself.
To let go is not to care for, but to care about.
To let go is not to fix, but to be supportive.
To let go is not to judge,
but to allow another to be a human being.
To let go is not to be in the middle arranging outcomes, but to allow others to effect their own outcomes.
To let go is not to be protective;
it is to permit another to face reality.
To let go is not to deny, but to accept.
To let go is not to nag, scold, or argue,
but to search out my own shortcomings and to correct them
To let go is not to adjust everything to my desires,
but to take each day as it comes and to cherish the moment.
To let go is not to criticize and regulate anyone, but to try to become what I dream I can be.
To let go is not to regret the past,
but to grow and live for the future.
To let go is to fear less and love more.
Nelson Mandela (18 juli 1918 – 5 december 2013)
Ithaka
As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard