The Art of Tetman Callis

“Evil that is everyday is lost in life, goes shrewdly into it; becomes a part of habitual blood.  First it is a convenient receptacle for blame.  It holds all hate.  We fasten to it—the permanent and always good excuse.  If it were not for it, ah then, we say, we would improve, we would succeed, […]

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“The people by me primitively guess that I am enemy and hate me: not alone for being different, or disdaining work, or worse, not doing any; but for something that would seem, if spoken for them, words of magic; for I take their souls away—I know it—and I play with them; I puppet them up […]

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“For the military historian, failure to maintain focus on the true objective is among the easiest mistakes to detect.  For the soldier it is among the most difficult blunders to avoid.” – Robert G. Tanner, Stonewall in the Valley Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“The trench on the Rebel side of the works was filled with their dead piled together in every way with their wounded.  The sight was terrible and ghastly.  We helped off their wounded as well we could, and searched for our own wounded in front.  Captain Corey was killed and never found.  Captain Thomas was […]

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“There is no use in hearing the term ‘apartment complex’ unless it is taken immediately to mean a syndrome, a fiesta of symptoms.” – Gary Lutz, “Femme” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“I have been told that when people say they see my father in me, I am to do one of two things.  The first is just to tell them that it must be only because he’s trying to get their attention because he wants something again.  Otherwise he wouldn’t be showing himself in me of […]

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“Is it one mistake after another, or is it the same one divvied up to make it last from one day to the next?” – Gary Lutz, “The Summer I Could Walk Again” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“In no time even the least sneaky of things will have already been handled awfully, will have drawn onto themselves a commonwealth of squandered touch: anything eventually sports the lonelihood of people who could no longer keep their hands to themselves.” — Gary Lutz, “The Least Sneaky of Things” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin […]

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“The mind’s eye is the least reliable of the sightholes.” – Gary Lutz, “I Was in Kilter with Him a Little” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“The people is an animal which can see and hear, but never thinks.  It is in a state of surprising lethargy or of surprising fury and goes constantly backwards and forwards from one state to the other, never knowing where it came from.” –  Montesquieu, “Letter 111,” Persian Letters (trans. Betts) Share this… Facebook Pinterest […]

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“If the poor be poor in heart and spirit as well as in appearance, how will they be aught but poor to the end of their days?” – “The Poor Turkey Girl,” Zuñi Folk Tales, Frank Cushing Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“When history is missing, it is replaced by fables; it is like a poor country where virtually worthless coins have to be included in the currency.” – Montesquieu, “Appendix 15,” Persian Letters (trans. Betts) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Where religion is concerned, the more trivial the issue, the more violent the dispute becomes.” – Montesquieu, “Appendix 13,” Persian Letters (trans. Betts) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Piety, a sign of strength in some characters, is in others a sign of weakness.  It is never without significance: for if on the one hand it is attractive in those who are virtuous, it completes the degradation of those who are not.” – Montesquieu, “Appendix 10,” Persian Letters (trans. Betts) Share this… Facebook Pinterest […]

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“To think a thing through meant only hollowing it out, letting it cave in, seeing it to a successful collapse.” – Gary Lutz, “Carriers” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“When you are no good at what you do, it does you no good to triumph at whatever you might come home to, either.” – Gary Lutz, “I Was in Kilter with Him, a Little” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“It is no wonder that criticism is a more conservative, more academically elite, more racially exclusive club than fiction writing itself. To be a critic in the manner of Virginia Woolf—the default position of the Anglo-American critic, from F.R. Leavis to Lionel Trilling to John Updike to Helen Vendler—requires more than a simple lack of […]

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“Just because there is a place for something doesn’t automatically mean it belongs there.” – Gary Lutz, “Onesome” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Most legislators have been men of limited abilities who have become leaders by chance, and have taken scarcely anything into account except their own whims and prejudices.  They seem not even to have been aware of the grandeur and dignity of their task: they have passed the time making puerile regulations, which, it is true, […]

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“A story is a serving of palpated verbal material with feelings surging through it, and not just some caboodle of data about fabricated people and their antics.  If a reader is asked again and again to travel the distance between a capital letter and a period, every sentence ought to have been routed through the […]

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“As far as arms go, I think they’re the one part of the body that tends to get short shrift in fiction, even though they’re the place where the trouble between people usually gets its start.” – Gary Lutz (from Justin Taylor interview in Bookslut) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“A job does things to a person, deducts a person pretty brutally from life.  Desks are terrible places, no matter how many wheels a chair might have.  You can’t do much about how drawers fill up.” – Gary Lutz (from Justin Taylor interview in Bookslut) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Writing is rich to the extent that the drama of the subject matter is supplemented or deepened by the drama of the letters within the words as they inch their way closer to each other or push significantly off.” – Gary Lutz, “The Sentence Is a Lonely Place” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email […]

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“Once the words begin to settle into their circumstance in a sentence and decide to make the most of their predicament, they look around and take notice of their neighbors. They seek out affinities, they adapt to each other, they begin to make adjustments in their appearance to try to blend in with each other […]

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“The sentence, with its narrow typographical confines, is a lonely place, the loneliest place for a writer, and the temptation for the writer to get out of one sentence as soon as possible and get going on the next sentence is entirely understandable. In fact, the conditions in just about any sentence soon enough become […]

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“A lie is a truth struck through with other, further truth.” – Gary Lutz, “This Is Nice of You” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“I have read descriptions of Paradise which would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there: according to some, the spirits of the blessed spend all their time playing the flute; others sentence them to walk about for ever; others again claim that while up there they dream about their mistresses down here, considering […]

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“The urge to greet every answer with another question is one we find in children not because it’s childish but because it’s natural.  Once you begin the search for knowledge, there is no obvious place to stop.  The fact that the desire for omniscience cannot be met does not make it either foolish or pathological.  […]

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“Is the desire for transcendence a matter of psychology—in which case it’s advisable to seek a good cure?  Or is the existence of that desire fundamental to any experience we could recognize as human?” – Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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