I found quantities of phrases like qui melius scit pati, majorem tenebit pacem [he who knows how to suffer well shall find the most peace], or Nolle consolari ab aliqua creatura magnae puritatis signum est [to refuse comfort from any creature is a sign of great faith], or the lovely per viam pacis, ad patriam perpetuae claritatis [by the way of peace to the country of everlasting clearness] that seemed to be made for me and which I have never forgotten.
Samuel Beckett / Courtesy Aeon
And yet, life is incredibly banal.
Trafficking in misinformation is wrong.
~ Scott Galloway / NY Magazine
Seneca for instance advises “to envisage every possibility and to strengthen the spirit to deal with the things which may conceivably come about. Rehearse them in your mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck.”
~ Seneca / Courtesy Philosophersmag
It is not the things themselves that disturb people but their judgements about those things
~ Epictetus / Courtesy Philosophersmag
Nothing good gets away.
~ John Steinbeck
At my age – which is way past retirement – if you haven’t found a person and a place you love, a house that suits you, an ideal bed, a perfect armchair, the books you value, a bit of garden, and something like comfort – you have my sympathy.
You could say blog-like, but I think “blog-like” is a disparaging term. I loathe blogs when I look at them. Blogs look to me illiterate, they look hasty, like someone babbling. To me writing is a considered act. It’s something which is a great labor of thought and consideration. A blog doesn’t seem to have any literary merit at all. It’s a chatty account of things that have happened to that particular person.
~ Paul Theroux / The Atlantic
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Wait it out, things will always change.
~ Marian Keyes / Guardian
There’s no greater hell than being an asshole with morals.
~ Reginald D. Hunter / Guardian
if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.
don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.
~ Charles Bukowski
“It’s a struggle — life’s a struggle.”
Richard Ashcroft / Glastonbury 2008
The interesting thing about being in a rut is that the only thing you see are the sides of the rut. You don’t see out.
~ Conversations with Jim Harrison
Our cures are interesting. Our infirmities aren’t. Everyone knows about infirmities.
~ Conversations with Jim Harrison
…the trouble is, as many will admit, only one therapist out of a thousand is any good.
~ Conversations with Jim Harrison
“I averaged twelve grand a year for ten years, and then I got a little more, up to thirty-five grand,” Harrison said.
~ Conversations with Jim Harrison
Writers, I think, are sometimes productive to the extent that they remain sort of childlike about certain things. They stay operative for that reason.
~ Conversations with Jim Harrison
“…in the final analysis, it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.”
~ Viktor Frankl / Psychology Today
“I don’t enjoy writing. I enjoy reading.”
~ William Giraldi / Courtesy Austin Kleon
“I don’t mind what happens.”
“Humans can believe things for two reasons: because they have grounds for thinking they’re true, or to affirm a myth that unites and emboldens the tribe,”
~ Steven Pinker / Quoted in the NYT, December 16th, 2020
I’m rich! I don’t mean money-wise. I mean that I have figured out how to never be around assholes at any time in my personal and professional life. That’s rich.
~ John Waters
“People are shown so many treats, and urged as to what to buy and what to wear and where to travel to, all of which pumps up a spurious notion of the perfect life.”
~ John le Carré / Guardian
“When I was nineteen,
I told a thirty-
year-old man what a
fool I had been when
I was seventeen.
‘We were always,’ he
said glancing down, ‘a
fool two years ago.”
~ Donald Hall
In Hamlet, Shakespeare tells us, we don’t know enough about life to know what the good news is and the bad news is…
~ Kurt Vonnegut / YouTube
Thus St. Paul speaks of “the mystery of iniquity”—what in our more prosaic and insensible times we tend to call “the problem of evil.” In Paul’s view, to call iniquity a “problem” is to trivialize it beyond recognition. For one who believes not only in God but in the goodness and graciousness of God, iniquity is the profoundest of mysteries. One scarcely dares to speak of it at all, and nothing is more desperately to be avoided, on this subject, than glibness.
~ Alan Jacobs / The Point Magazine
The key to eternal happiness is low overhead and no debt.
~ Lynda Barry / Courtesy Austin Kleon
“To make others less happy is a crime.”
~ Roger Ebert / Courtesy Austin Kleon
…we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.
~ Philip Larkin / The Mower
“I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don’t respect the law…”
~ Brendan Behan / Courtesy Austin Kleon
The world may end. You’re right. But that’s not a reason to be scared. None of us know what will happen. Don’t spend time worrying about it. Make the most beautiful thing you can. Try to do that every day. That’s it. You know? What are you working for, posterity? We don’t know if there is any posterity.
~ Laurie Anderson
Home is not where you are born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease.
~ Naguib Mahfouz