“To be able to die of old age and be put to rest with a lavish funeral required exceptional talent.” – Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain (trans. Mabel Lee) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print
Entries from July 2019
Not to mention luck
July 31st, 2019 · No Comments
Tags: Verandah
Reach out and touch it
July 30th, 2019 · No Comments
“Non-existence exists so there is non-existence of existence; non-existence of existence exists so there is non-existence of non-existence.” – Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain (trans. Mabel Lee) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print
Tags: Lit & Crit
Just as well him as another
July 29th, 2019 · No Comments
“Let’s call it love—you don’t deserve it, you’ve known all along, but then somebody as misguided and hopeless as you are shows up and you think: maybe.” – Kimberly King Parsons, “Wisdom to Know the Difference” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print
Tags: Lit & Crit
Please don’t talk about love tonight
July 28th, 2019 · No Comments
“There’s a reason people in foodwork stay up late, drinking and drugging. Your shift ends and hours later you’re still sweating from those burners, amped up and pissed at whichever customer or coworker screwed you the hardest.” – Kimberly King Parsons, “Wisdom to Know the Difference” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print
Tags: Lit & Crit
Your choice, man
July 27th, 2019 · No Comments
“If you think she is beautiful she will be beautiful, if there is evil in your heart you will only see demons.” – Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain (trans. Mabel Lee) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print
Tags: Lit & Crit
Sign me up
July 26th, 2019 · No Comments
“Who doesn’t want to go down in the annals of history and moreover be able to draw advance overtime payments as well as a writer’s fee?” – Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain (trans. Mabel Lee) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print
Tags: Economics · Lit & Crit
Onward, through the fog
July 25th, 2019 · No Comments
“If they understand anything, writers know that the world is not characterized by absolute clarity.” – Ben Yagoda, About Town Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print
Tags: Lit & Crit
Deus ex machina
July 24th, 2019 · No Comments
“Nuclear energy insists on global government, on law, on order, and on the willingness of the community to take the responsibility for the acts of the individual.” – E. B. White, The New Yorker, August 18, 1945 Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print
Tags: Lit & Crit · Politics & Law
What’s love got to do with it
July 23rd, 2019 · No Comments
“I went on through the post town of Sekimoto, where the citizens in their rows of houses offer lodgings and wait upon the traveler as their master for a night, while the girls singing in the windows entice him in to treat him as a husband. How sad, to pin such vows of eternal love […]
Would you like fries with that
July 22nd, 2019 · No Comments
“The fisherman hauls his nets, tiring his body in the very act of shielding it from starvation; the starving fish takes the bait, its very need for life condemning it to death. Just how much can a man profit in this world; how much can a little fish consume? Each feels the same about existence, […]
Tags: Lit & Crit · Verandah
Me Tarzan, you Jane
July 21st, 2019 · No Comments
“Plop a baby human into a group of chimps and ask them to raise him, Tarzan style, and the human as an adult will know how to run around the forest, climb trees, find food, and masturbate. That’s who each of us actually is.” – Tim Urban, “Neuralink and the Brain’s Magical Future” Share this… […]
Tags: Science
In a galaxy far, far away
July 20th, 2019 · No Comments
“No one ever really falls in love with anyone they know. To fall in love with someone that one knows is to fall in love with someone that one already fell in love with a long time ago.” – Tan Lin, “Ambient Stylistics” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print
Tags: Verandah
That’s just, like, your opinion
July 19th, 2019 · No Comments
“There is no such thing as a pure fact, innocent of interpretation. Behind every fact presented to the world—by a teacher, a writer, anyone—is a judgment. The judgement that has been made is that this fact is important, and that other facts, omitted, are not important.” – Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United […]
Tags: Politics & Law
Body attachment
July 18th, 2019 · No Comments
“No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose conscientiously whether she will or will not be a mother.” – Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print
Tags: Economics · Politics & Law · The American Constitution
Asking nicely won’t help
July 17th, 2019 · No Comments
“The struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” – Frederick Douglass (quoted by Howard Zinn in A People’s History of the United […]
Tags: Politics & Law
And that’s the truth
July 16th, 2019 · No Comments
“Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles or gives me any best place. And a’nt I a woman? Look at my arm! I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And a’nt I a woman? I would work as much and eat as much as a […]
Tags: Politics & Law
The poets studied rules of verse, and the ladies, they rolled their eyes
July 15th, 2019 · No Comments
“To say that the Declaration of Independence, even by its own language, was limited to life, liberty, and happiness for white males is not to denounce the makers and signers of the Declaration for holding the ideas expected of privileged males of the eighteenth century. Reformers and radicals, looking discontentedly at history, are often accused […]
Tags: Politics & Law
It’s that simple
July 14th, 2019 · No Comments
“If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.” – Professor Moran Cerf (quoted by Tim Urban in “Neuralink and the Brain’s Magical Future”) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print
Tags: Other Stuff · Science
The call of the muse
July 13th, 2019 · No Comments
“There are no empty hopes. But knowing what to hope for is steady work. What was ever so important to you you left your daily life to heed it?” – Joanna Klink, “The Infinities” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print
Tags: Lit & Crit · Verandah
The thing to do
July 12th, 2019 · No Comments
“If you’ve ever been in a fight with someone you love, each of you holding the pistol of your dignity to the other’s temple, despite, or maybe because of, the width and breadth of that love, which has you pretty sure you’ve been mistaken for her father, while she’s fairly certain she’s again found someone […]
Tags: Lit & Crit
Matters of equity
July 11th, 2019 · No Comments
“Seamen are a class of persons remarkable for their rashness, thoughtlessness, and improvidence. They are generally necessitous, ignorant of the nature and extent of their own rights and privileges, and for the most part incapable of duly appreciating their value. They combine, in a singular manner, the apparent anomalies of gallantry, extravagance, profusion in expenditure, […]
Tags: Economics · Politics & Law · The American Constitution
Landlubbers ahoy
July 10th, 2019 · No Comments
The crews of large ships are distributed into classes, according to their different capacities; and thus the grade of one’s seamanship may be ascertained by the station he may have held. The classification is stated in Van Heytbuysen’s Marine Evidence, p. 9, as follows: Quarter-masters, Boatswain’s mates, Gunners and Gunners’ mates, Forecastle-men — Best seamen […]
Tags: Politics & Law
It’s nice when they’re connected
July 9th, 2019 · No Comments
“Intelligence is the ability to solve a problem, to decipher a riddle, to master a set of facts. Judgment is the ability to orbit a problem or a set of facts and see it as it might be seen through other eyes, by observers with different biases, motives, and backgrounds.” – James Comey, A Higher […]
Tags: Lit & Crit · Politics & Law
It takes you to a Zen space
July 2nd, 2019 · No Comments
“There is a certain freedom in being totally screwed, in knowing you will be attacked no matter what you do.” – James Comey, A Higher Loyalty Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print
Tags: Politics & Law
Be some other guy
July 1st, 2019 · No Comments
“Torture is wrong. Don’t be the torture guy.” – Patrice Comey (quoted by James Comey in A Higher Loyalty) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print
Tags: Politics & Law