The Art of Tetman Callis

“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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“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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“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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“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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“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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“The less fear the better. Fear unmans us. Fear degrades us.” – Philip Roth, Nemesis Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“The effective half-life of evil is always relatively short.” – Stephen King, The Stand Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“But if there be no great philosophic idea, if, for the time being, mankind, instead of going through a period of growth, is going through a corresponding process of decay and decomposition from some old, fulfilled, obsolete idea, then what is the good of educating? Decay and decomposition will take their own way. It is […]

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“Modernity has not turned out altogether well. To the pioneers of Enlightenment, it appeared that false certainties and artificial hierarchies were the chief obstacles to general happiness. To many the suspicion has by now occurred that there are no true certainties and no natural hierarchies, yet also that individual and social well-being require some certainties, […]

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“None of us want to see portents and omens, no matter how much we like our ghost stories and the spooky films. None of us want to really see a Star in the East or a pillar of fire by night. We want peace and rationality and routine.” – Stephen King, The Stand (emphasis in […]

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“The culture of professionalism and expertise, the bureaucratization of opinion and taste, are not merely mechanisms of social control or a failure of nerve. They are also in part a response to genuine intellectual progress. There’s more to know now than in the ‘30s, and more people have joined the conversation. Perhaps the disappearance of […]

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“The beginning of political decency and rationality is to recognize others’ similarity in important respects to oneself; that is, to identify imaginatively. Which is what one does when reading fiction. Literature is, in this sense, practice for civic life.” – George Scialabba, “The Sealed Envelope” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Time past was time past. You just couldn’t get hold of the things you had done and turn them right again. Such power might be given to the gods, but it was not given to men and women, and that was probably a good thing. Had it been otherwise, people would probably die of old […]

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“Thought is the enemy of flow.” – Vinnie Colaiuta (quoted by Rick Beato in “Why Jeff Beck is Uncopyable”) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“If you can’t afford a movie, go to the zoo. If you can’t afford the zoo, go see a politician.” – Stephen King, The Stand Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance . . . or change. Once such incantatory phrases as ‘we see now through a glass darkly’ and […]

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“Not ‘Forgive us our sins’ but ‘Smite us for our iniquities’ should be the prayer of man to a most just God.” – Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all.” – Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, […]

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“Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was […]

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“One’s days were too brief to take the burden of another’s errors on one’s shoulders. Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings […]

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“When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.” – Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak. That is all that can be said for them. They are simply cheques that men […]

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“The real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial.” – Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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