The Art of Tetman Callis

“Sumer, its rise and fall, provides the historian with the most ancient example of the poignant irony inherent in man’s fate. As the Sumerian literary documents make amply manifest, it was the competitive drive for superiority and preeminence, for victory, prestige, and glory, that provided the psychological motivation sparking the material and cultural advances for […]

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“The Sumerians, according to their own records, cherished goodness and truth, law and order, freedom and justice, mercy and compassion—and abhorred their opposites. The gods, too, preferred the ethical and the moral to the unethical and the immoral. Unfortunately, in their inscrutable fashion, they had created sin, evil, suffering, and misfortune, and there was little […]

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“Slavery was a recognized institution of Sumerian society. The temples, palaces, and rich estates owned slaves and exploited them for their own benefit. Many slaves were prisoners of war; these were not necessarily foreigners, but could be Sumerians, from a defeated neighboring city. Slaves were also recruited in other ways: freemen might be reduced to […]

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“The economic and social life of Sumer was characterized by the all-pervading concepts of law and justice. Significant economic and legal reforms were introduced as early as the twenty-fourth century B.C. by the Lagash ruler Urukagina. Law codes were promulgated as early as the twenty-first century, and one of these, the Ur-Nammu law code, has […]

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“A second chance—that’s the delusion. There never was to be but one. We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.” – Henry James, “The Middle Years” (emphasis in original)

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“Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.” – Edgar Allen Poe, “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether”

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“Contrary to the State’s argument that it has discretion to charge whatever and whomever it desires, the separation of powers doctrine does not justify depriving a person of his or her constitutional rights.” – Judge J. Bustamante, State of New Mexico v. Mark Rendleman, et al.

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“Sweet recreation barr’d, what doth ensue But moody and dull melancholy,—Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair,—And, at her heels, a huge infectious troop Of pale distemperatures and foes to life?” – William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors

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“Few among us are qualified to testify as to whether God is dead, or alive, or wandering somewhere in exile (the possibility I tend to favor).” – Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human

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“It was my grandmother who told me, sleep with a bunch of men, so that when the right one comes along, you’ll know what you’re doing.” – Alexa Junge, “A Little Bit of Knowledge”

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“DJ’s traditional position on gender is not something he learned at home. While he was always into all the traditional boy things—cars, trucks, guns—until he was four, the boy things he liked were just the things he happened to like. He liked guns because he liked guns, not because boys were supposed to like guns. […]

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“Nothing will get you into trouble so deep or as sad as faith.” – Rick Bass, “Juggernaut”

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“Everything the sun says is true, and it is referred to as ‘she’ in Arabic.” – Paulette Jiles, “Dune Trek”

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“As a child, I used to try to love God but at the same time I was afraid He would lean down out of heaven and take a bite out of my head.” – Paulette Jiles, “Dune Trek”

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“This is the way it works: Only saints and bandits know how unimportant is the human body. Include soldiers. The pair is the smallest unit in which the more highly developed life forms can endure cosmic dimensions.” – Paulette Jiles, “Dune Trek”

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“One thing about officers is they always get paid.” – Paulette Jiles, “Dune Trek”

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“All fear the witch, and so I do. Quiet times are what we’re owed. Men alive are trouble. Makers.” – E. J. Cullen to Q, The Quarterly 1, Spring 1987

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“I leave a lot out when I tell the truth.” – Amy Hempel to Q, The Quarterly 1, Spring 1987

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“A good railroad man is ALWAYS ON TIME.” – George H. Baker, Standard Railroad Signals: Fireman’s and Brakeman’s Preparatory Instruction – PART ONE (emphasis in original)

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“Ours is a time in which every intellectual or artistic or moral event is absorbed by a predatory embrace of consciousness: historicizing. Any statement or act can be assessed as a necessarily transient ‘development’ or, on a lower level, belittled as mere ‘fashion.’ The human mind possesses now, almost as second nature, a perspective on […]

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“Nobody ever says I am your prisoner without believing somehow in clemency, in mercy or in short memories, it is not something said by battered wives or people held in unnumbered rooms or children with cigarette burns.” – Paulette Jiles, “The James Poems”

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“WANTED POSTER – Jesse Woodson James: five feet eleven inches tall, brown hair, regulation killer-blue eyes. In photographs appears to be considering shooting the photographer. Does not test out well. Approaches casual strangers in an intimate way and interferes massively in their private lives. Is trapped in the dead hole and neither moves nor changes. […]

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“Wives live in a different country, a country of women without civil wars, or trains, or motivations. They arrive with bandages.” – Paulette Jiles, “The James Poems”

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“Anybody who wanders around the world saying, ‘Yes, I’m from Texas,’ deserves whatever happens to him.” – Hunter S. Thompson, “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved”

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“Teeth outlast everything. Death is nothing to a tooth. Hundreds of years in acidic soil just keeps a tooth clean. A fire that burns away hair and flesh and even bone leaves teeth dazzling like daisies in the ashes. Life is what destroys teeth. Undiluted apple juice in a baby bottle, sourballs, the pH balance […]

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“When you get elected President I think the first thing they do is take you in a room and say you know you’re not gonna do shit. Your hands are tied and Congress have the whole thing locked down and we all get screwed.” – Willie Nelson (interviewed by Martin Chilton in Telegraph Music, 2012)

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“Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten hisinmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in […]

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“Alcibiades. He was the Golden Boy of 4th century Athenian culture. Pericles was his guardian, Plato his teacher. A fine athlete, a brilliant general, handsome, marvelously intelligent, popular, everything. A summation of the Golden Age. And what happened? He went bad. He was vain, treacherous, selfish, sacrilegious, debauched, dishonest, and a traitor twice over. His […]

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“I’ll tell you, it’s much easier to say why a poorly written story is bad than why a really good story is good.” – Mikhail Iossel, Love Like Water, Love Like Fire

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“When you’re young, you think there’ll be plenty of time for everything in your life: counting all the grains of sand in the Sahara Desert, seeing all the people in the world, becoming greater than Jesus and Lenin and Lomonosov and Pushkin and Einstein all rolled into one, reuniting at some point with everyone you’ve […]

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