A native of Brunswick, Maine, Renzo Llorente lives in Spain, where he teaches philosophy on Saint Louis University’s Madrid campus. In addition to his
academic publications, Llorente is the author of Beyond the Pale: Exercises in Provocation, a collection of aphorisms and fragments published by
Vagabond Voices. Part I of Beyond the Pale contains musings on a wide variety of topics, while Part II consists of brief meditations on political themes. Here are some selections from Part I:

Whence the condemnation of loitering? Why this aversion to what is, after all, the definitive metaphor for “the human condition”? To loiter: to remain in an area for no obvious reason (Merriam-Webster).

To have unclear thoughts is to mumble in silence.

We often praise optimism as though it were a virtue, when it is in fact something of a pathology. To be an optimist is to be metaphysically in denial.

Theology is the pious form of sophistry.

Our regrets never disappoint us: no matter how regularly we frequent them, they always afford us an inexhaustible source of distress.