The Art of Tetman Callis

“To be free from repulsion and attraction, or from the wish to take or to avoid—to enter in the mood of complete impartiality—is the most profound of arts.” – The Tibetan Book of the Dead (trans. Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Religion operates in different ways in different persons. It hardens some natures to pride and bigotry; it softens others to sentimentality and a refusal to confront life’s sterner demands. Some it inexplicably irradiates; some it brutalizes. Religion may be as Professor Freud said, civilization’s greatest illusion. If that is so, it may be thought of […]

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“Listen up: Find a nice girl from the neighborhood, treat her with respect, buy her flowers from time to time and you’ll be happy all your days.” – John Kass, Chicago Tribune, August 10, 2018 Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Dance if the streets are full. Dance harder when the streets are empty.” – Kelli Colyer-Christian, Facebook, May 22, 2020 Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Some people travel abroad to find themselves. I’m not one of them.” – Adriana Paramo, “He Tells Me That I’m Beautifool” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“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… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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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… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“The noblest question in the world is What Good may I do in it?” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1737 (emphasis in original) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“What is true, what is false, is but wind in a horse’s ear.” – Takuan Soho, Painting of the Master of Mount Yu Riding a Donkey (trans. Stephen D. Allee) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Fujiwara Sadanobu (1088-1156) was the grandson of Fujiwara Yukinari (Kozei, 972-1027), one of the greatest calligraphers of Japan, and the son of Sadazane (1063-ca. 1131) . . .. He is known for having copied single-handedly onto nearly six hundred scrolls the entire Issaikyo, the Chinese translation of the Tripitaka, a task that spanned twenty-seven years. […]

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“God walks out of the room when you’re thinking about money.” – Quincy Jones (quoted in AARP Bulletin, April 2018) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“All people being equally oppressed is not equality.” – Angela Ross, Facebook, June 14, 2019 Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“There are never any winners in a knife fight, just different degrees of losers.” – Dominic Gwinn, “I Saw a Man Who Danced with His Wife” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“I try not to talk about being a woman because I don’t want to be defined that way. I try not to talk about religion or politics because I am at odds with the people where I live. I try not to talk about my opinions, because who cares. I try not to talk at […]

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“Frederick the Great was accustomed to say: ‘The older one gets the more convinced one becomes that his Majesty King Chance does three-quarters of the business of this miserable universe.’ ” — Albet Sorel, The Eastern Question in the Eighteenth Century Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“It is no crime that a person’s taste changes according to what he experiences and is exposed to. The youth for example are comforted by exaggerated prattle and obscenity. While the aged prefer speech that is free of such blemishes. Therefore we say that we cannot clearly define the limits of taste, for it is […]

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“Bad behavior heralds ruin.” – Jac Jemc, The Grip of It Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Unlasting, what could be forever? Or only what it seemed? Rock corrodes, rivers freeze, fruit rots; stabbed, blood of black and white bleeds alike; trained parrots tell more truth than most, and who is lonelier: the hawk or the worm? Every flowering heart shrivels dry and pitted as the herb from which it bloomed, and […]

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“Is not ambition but an endless ladder by which no height is ever climbed till the last unreachable rung is mounted? For height leads on to height, and there is no resting-place upon them, and rung doth grow upon rung, and there is no limit to the number. Doth not wealth satiate, and become nauseous, […]

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“In this world there are people who are so lonely thateach hand reaching out to them is like a candle ina dark cave.” – Peycho Kanev, “The Hope” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“The capitalist machine does not run the risk of becoming mad, it is mad from one end to the other and from the beginning, and this is the source of its rationality. . . . its operation grows more relentless . . . it produces the terrible single class of gray gentlemen . . . […]

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“How long until I forget nothing in this world belongs to us, not even ourselves?” – Jessica Lynn Suchon, “Ars Poetica with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“If people weren’t in such a rush, they’d live twice as long and achieve three times as much.” – Alfred Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz (trans. Michael Hofmann) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“One does not necessarily die nobly or even quietly after being shot. In most instances it is an excruciating experience.” – Leon Metz, The Shooters Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Life’s a war zone. Death’s the sanctuary. You want to be safe?” – Gordon Lish, Conversations with Gordon Lish (eds. David Winters and Jason Lucarelli) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“There is no predicting who can protect us and who can attack us, nor whom we will harm and whom we will save.” – Paola Peroni, “Protection” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“There’s two roads to take, and they’re both bad.” – Bob Dylan, Nobel Lecture Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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“Without absolute knowing, subjects are unable to act freely because they posit an authoritative substance that ultimately functions as a barrier to the act. The belief in substance limits what one conceives of as possible. For instance, the subject that believes in the substantiality of God can’t act in a way free of God or […]

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“The act of teaching the young so that they can carry our humanity, what we’ve made of ourselves, into future worlds is an act that in a sense defies the forward march of time and the relentless annihilation and oblivion of death. Even as a father’s material being abandons his children, he leaves something of […]

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“It’s what musicians do when they don’t know what to do anymore. They take out a wineglass or a handkerchief and try to play their cellos with that. Or they rub a balloon and tell people that this is their new instrument. Or they hang on to the bow and toss the cello, and they […]

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