Home > Work > Homesick: Why I Live in a Shed
1 " The house in Bristol belonged to a family who were traveling the world on our combined rent. "
― Catrina Davies , Homesick: Why I Live in a Shed
2 " People I know with houses squeeze every drop of capital out of them, because, even when it's hard, squeezing capital out of a house is a hell of a lot easier than squeezing it out of work. "
3 " There was something increasingly radical in doing nothing, it seemed to me, within a society that had a fetish for being busy. "
4 " I remembered how Dad used to say that possession is nine points of the law. I still didn't know exactly what it meant.But I did know exactly where the key to his old office was hidden. "
5 " Iain Pirie, Associate Professor in Politics and International Studies at Warwick University, argues that it’s not just the way women are represented in the media that’s helping to fuel this rise (a well-documented problem), but capitalism itself, which has corrupted our relationship with our own bodies and the food that sustains them. Pirie argues that the cycle of bingeing and purging that characterizes bulimia nervosa is similar to the accelerated and chaotic consumption that underpins modern culture and is vital for economic growth.18 The conflicting expectations placed on our bodies by advertisers – bombarding us with messages that food is a reward and a compensation (Have a break, have a KitKat), while at the same time telling us that not eating puts us higher on the moral and social hierarchy – are actually deadly.† Eating so much it hurts and then throwing it up in a fit of utter self-loathing is the perfect metaphor for consumerism. "
6 " Even the things that seemed the most solid and timeless, like towering cliffs of granite, were in fact in a state of constant flux. It was comforting and also frightening. Frightening because there was nothing to hold on to. Comforting because there was nothing to lose. "
7 " I would spend my adulthood watching the world I loved disappear, grieving, counting the losses one by one, trying to find my way home. "
8 " I remembered that confidence had its roots in trust, and that I used to trust myself, but somewhere along the way I had decided the world could not be trusted, and I could not be trusted to make my way in it. There was a hollow place inside me where that confidence used to be. "
9 " The peace of knowing that the true art of living is not to gather things and polish them and lay them out for others to admire, but to have next to nothing, get plenty out of it, and give the rest away. "
10 " I’d read somewhere that reading was the cheapest way to travel, and it was true. "