The Art of Tetman Callis

“Other possibilities seem more remote the longer you run away from yourself, until the you you now hate has become the sunk cost fallacy that is your daily waking life, and if you change one thing then you’ll have to change another.” – Liza Olson, “The Girls in the Room” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter […]

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“If we cannot help but blame others for things that are beyond their control, this may be because wretchedness is our basic condition, as inevitable as it is blameworthy, and only an ideology—such as the one that has reigned throughout modernity—that stresses our earthly perfectibility will place the wretched in the earthly purgatories of rehab […]

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“Mitch Hedberg, dead of an overdose at thirty-seven, said of addiction that it is a disease, but a weird one: ‘It’s the only disease people yell at you for having’.” – Justin E. H. Smith, “A Surfeit of Black Bile” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“We say different things for different audiences, whether in intimate dialogue with a loved one, or displayed as a curiosity like the eloquent ape in Kafka’s ‘Report to an Academy’. This means that at least to some extent all life is a ‘performance’, which we do not have to interpret in any radical way, such […]

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“From the earliest times when man chose to guide his relations with fellow men by allegiance to the rule of law rather than force, he has been faced with the problem how best to deal with the individual in society who through moral conviction concluded that a law with which he was confronted was unjust […]

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“We recognize, as appellants urge, the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by the judge and contrary to the evidence. This is a power that must exist as long as we adhere to the general verdict in criminal cases, for the courts cannot […]

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“An aspect of the deadlock in British and American politics today is the way in which the hinterland of the left’s assumptions remains determinatively Protestant. Indeed its subjectivism, emotionalism, restrictive puritanism, iconoclasm, and opposition to high culture owe more in the end to the Reformation than they do to the Enlightenment. These attitudes are all […]

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“An elderly man was at home, dying in bed. He smelled the aroma of his favorite chocolate chip cookies baking. He wanted one last cookie before he died. He fell out of bed, crawled to the landing, rolled down the stairs, and crawled into the kitchen where his wife was busily baking cookies. With waning […]

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“Verbal nonsense (Ganser syndrome) and physical nonsense (buffoonery syndrome) within the realm of medical science are pathologized conditions. Verbal nonsense (as in vaudeville, joking) and physical nonsense (as in slapstick, clowning) within the realm of entertainment (both on and off the stage) are conditions of art.” – Mady Schutzman, “Being Approximate: The Ganser Syndrome and […]

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“The more one has experienced, the more there is to be astonished by. Our capacity for wonder grows with experience, becomes more urgent.” – Elias Canetti, “Selected Notes from Hampstead” (trans. John Hargraves) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Don’t say it’s too late: how can you know you don’t still have thirty years to begin a new life? Don’t say it’s too early: how can you know that you won’t be dead in a month and that other people won’t fashion lives for themselves out of the ruins of yours?” – Elias Canetti, […]

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“History is not Tragedy. To understand historical reality, it is sometimes necessary not to know the outcome.” – Pierre Vidal-Naquet (quoted by Julian Jackson in France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944 (emphasis in original)) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Adhesives: The promises you promise not to break. The forgiveness when you do.” – Beth Kephart, “Love in the Knots of the Coptic Stitch” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Agent livelock differs from agent deadlock in that the livelocked agent is not blocked or waiting for anything, but is continuously given tasks to perform and can never catch up or achieve its goal.” – Wayne Jansen and Tom Karygiannis, Mobile Agent Security Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“As long as people feel cheated, bored, harassed, endangered, or betrayed at work, sabotage will be used as a direct method of achieving job satisfaction – the kind that never has to get the bosses’ approval.” – Martin Sprouse, Sabotage in the American Workplace Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“There is only one unpardonable sin—deliberate cruelty. All else can be forgiven. That, never.” – Truman Capote, The Thanksgiving Visitor (emphasis in original) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“There was a movement on our right. Probably a scout. We let him pass. Another passed even closer. Then a compact mass of men came within our sights on the scarp and the beach below. ‘Give it to them, Chae,’ I whispered, and as he opened up, I started chucking grenades as fast as I […]

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“There is a great temptation on the part of the guerrilla leader to try to take over politically and then to bargain with his outside supporters for political power. This situation may become downright embarrassing to those trying to conclude a treaty that will ensure a lasting peace.” – Commander Eugene Franklin Clark, USN, The […]

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“My eyes grew accustomed to the dim glow of the embers and I studied the faces about us. The sunken cheeks and bony forearms and hands that extended out of long white sleeves showed that the grim specter of malnutrition was present. The normally healthy brown pigmentation of the skin had given way to a […]

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“It’s the freaking American way—you start out in a dangerous craphole and work hard so you can someday move up to a somewhat less dangerous craphole. And finally maybe you get a mansion.” – George Saunders, “Sea Oak” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“I once heard a story about a girl who requested something so vile from her paramour that he told her family and they had her hauled her off to a sanitarium. I don’t know what deviant pleasure she asked for, though I desperately wish I did. What magical thing could you want so badly that […]

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“It is worth attention, that the English have more songs and ballads on the subject of madness, than any of their neighbours.” – Bishop Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Life turned out to be a string of small disasters twisted together with a bunch of thankless work. So many things. It was hard to even catch your breath.” – Mary Jones, “A Longer and Slightly More Complicated History of Her Heart” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“The man that will not when he may, sall have nocht when he wald.” – Robert Henryson, “Robin and Makyne” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Originalism is the only approach to text that is compatible with democracy. When government-adopted texts are given a new meaning, the law is changed; and changing written law, like adopting written law in the first place, is the function of the first two branches of government—elected legislators and (in the case of authorized prescriptions by […]

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“There’s nobody less salvageable than a ruined good boy.” – Philip Roth, Nemesis Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Sometimes you’re lucky and sometimes you’re not. Any biography is chance, and, beginning at conception, chance—the tyranny of contingency—is everything.” – Philip Roth, Nemesis Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“I am no such pil’d cynique to believe that beggery is the onely happinesse, or, with a number of these patient fooles, to sing, ‘My minde to me a kingdoms is,’ when the lanke hungrie belly barkes for foode.” – Ben Jonson, Every Man out of his Humour Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email […]

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“Every word employed in the constitution is to be expounded in its plain, obvious, and common sense, unless the context furnishes some ground to control, qualify, or enlarge it. Constitutions are not designed for metaphysical or logical subtleties, for niceties of expression, for critical propriety, for elaborate shades of meaning, or for the exercise of […]

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“The ordinary-meaning rule is the most fundamental semantic rule of interpretation. It governs constitutions, statutes, rules, and private instruments. Interpreters should not be required to divine arcane nuances or to discover hidden meanings.” – Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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