The Art of Tetman Callis

“Let us preserve our reputation by performing our engagements; our credit by fulfilling our contracts; and friends by gratitude and kindness; for we know not how soon we may again have occasion for all of them.” – Benjamin Franklin, “Letter to Samuel Mather”, May 12, 1784 Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word consider how it is spelt, and if you do not remember it, turn to a dictionary. It produces great praise to a lady to spell well.” – Thomas Jefferson, “Letter to Martha Jefferson”, November 28, 1783 Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“I want my poems to have edges. To be more like a photograph than a movie. 35mm, a rule of dimensions: what is and is not in the shot. If you want to include more in the image than will fit, you have to change where you stand. Either that or change the world: Move […]

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“We may destroy our civilization, but we cannot escape it. We may savor a soured remorse at the growth of civilization, but that will yield us no large or lasting reward. There is no turning back: our only way is a radical struggle for the City of the Just.” – Irving Howe, “The City in […]

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“I have come to be convinced that it is only the unbending observance of custom that sustains life in an urban circumstance.” – Gordon Lish, What I Know So Far Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“The suspicion of the city and all it represents seems to run so deeply in our culture that it would be impossible to eradicate it, even if anyone were naive enough to wish to. In its sophisticated variants it is a suspicion necessary for sanity, if only because modern civilization cannot yield very much to […]

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“The suspicion of artifice and cultivation, the belief in the superior moral and therapeutic uses of the ‘natural,’ the fear that corruption must follow upon a high civilization—such motifs appear to be strongly ingrained in Western Christianity and the civilization carrying it. There are Sodom and Gomorrah. There is the whore of Babylon. There is […]

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“In literature the natural is a category of artifice.” – Irving Howe, “The City in Literature” Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“One does not regret anything as long as one does not notice what one has lost.“ – Guy de Maupassant, “In the Wood” (trans. McMaster, et al.) Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“Men I find to be a Sort of Beings very badly constructed, as they are generally more easily provok’d than reconcil’d, more disposed to do Mischief to each other than to make Reparation, much more easily deceiv’d than undeceiv’d, and having more Pride and even Pleasure in killing than in begetting one another; for without […]

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“No one is safe. The world is corrupt. All we can do is dance. “ – Tammy Heejae Lee, “Roe Soup Dance” Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“I hate to tell you, mister, but only dead men are free.” – Bob Dylan, “Murder Most Foul” Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“From Socrates forward, there are countless witnesses to the value of irony for the private individual: as a complex, serious method of seeking and holding one’s truth, and as a method of saving one’s sanity. But as irony becomes the good taste of what is, after all, an essentially collective activity — the making of […]

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“Of everything that’s said, one can ask: why? (Including: why should I say that? And: why should I say anything at all?)” – Susan Sontag, “The Aesthetics of Silence” Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“A landscape doesn’t demand from the spectator his ‘understanding,’ his imputations of significance, his anxieties and sympathies; it demands, rather, his absence, that he not add anything to it. Contemplation, strictly speaking, entails self-forgetfulness on the part of the spectator: an object worthy of contemplation is one which, in effect, annihilates the perceiving subject.” – […]

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“There remains the inescapable truth about perception: the positivity of all experience at every moment of it. As John Cage has insisted, ‘there is no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound.’ (Cage has described how, even in a soundless chamber, he still heard at least two things: his heartbeat […]

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“Is there such an agent as a single agent? Each individual admittedly houses several identities or role-players. Is the agent an individual or does his individuality reside in a part he plays? Is he a cluster of attitudes seen through time, or a single facet caught in action and engagement?” – George Kubler, “Style and […]

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“As soon as one likes a woman one sincerely believes that they could not get along without her for the rest of their life. One knows that one has felt the same way before and that disgust invariably succeeded gratification; that in order to pass one’s existence side by side with another there must be […]

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“This is what I know: Some people live to break fragile things, and some people yearn to shatter. Tell me which one you are, and I’ll tell you your kink.” – Daniel Riddle Rodriguez, “How to Be Royal” Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“This is what I know: Most men are talkers. They explain everything, answering every question you never asked like it’s their last chance to speak, eyes shiny with desperation. The king’s tongue is a tool for soft power; a whip, a bludgeon, a bucket brigade dumping flora and fauna into my ever-waiting ears.” – Daniel […]

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“He had squandered a little money, which action, in a poor family, is one of the greatest crimes. With rich people a man who amuses himself only sows his wild oats. He is what is generally called a sport. But among needy families a boy who forces his parents to break into the capital becomes […]

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“Love, my dear, is made up of imperceptible sensations. We know that it is as strong as death, but also as frail as glass. The slightest shock breaks it, and our power crumbles, and we are never able to raise it again.” – Guy de Maupassant, “The Kiss” (trans. McMaster, et al.) Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“Treat your Wife always with Respect. It will procure Respect to you, not from her only, but from all that observe it. Never use a slighting Expression to her even in jest; for Slights in Jest after frequent bandyings, are apt to end in angry earnest. Be studious in your Profession, and you will be […]

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“We embarked for Calais with a Number of Passengers who had never been before at Sea. They would previously make a hearty Breakfast, because if the Wind should fail, we might not get over till Supper-time. Doubtless they though that when they had paid for their Breakfast they should have a Right to it, and […]

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“It sometimes is cloudy, it rains, it hails; again ‘tis clear and pleasant, and the Sun shines on us. Take one thing with another, and the World is a pretty good sort of a World; and ‘tis our Duty to make the best of it and be thankful. One’s true Happiness depends more upon one’s […]

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“Who is wise? He that learns from every One.Who is powerful? He that governs his Passions.Who is rich? He that is content.Who is that? Nobody.”– Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard Improved, 1755 Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“The first Degree of Folly, is to conceit one’s self wise; the second to profess it; the third to despise Counsel.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard Improved, 1754 Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“Success has ruin’d many a Man.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard Improved, 1752 Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“Mankind are very odd Creatures: One Half censure what they practise, the other half practise what they censure; the rest always say and do as they ought.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard Improved, 1752 Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“There are three things extremely hard, Steel, a Diamond and to know one’s self.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard Improved, 1750 Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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