“Power is only important as an instrument for service to the powerless.”
— Lech Walesa, human rights activist, Polish president, Nobel laureate (b.
1943)
“I’m not angry — I’m delightful.” — Bob Dylan, “Don’t Look Back”
“Beer! Now there’s a temporary solution…” — Homer J. Simpson.
“…Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand….”
“That’s a great deal to make one word mean,” Alice said in a thoughtful tone. “When I make a word do a lot of work like that,” said Humpty Dumpty, “I always pay it extra.” -Lewis Carroll, mathematician and writer (1832-1898)
“Love involves a peculiar, unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding.”
“My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been.”
“Our whole guise is like giving a sign to the world to think of us in a certain way but there’s a point between what you want people to know about you and what you can’t help people knowing about you. And that has to do with what I’ve always called the gap between intention and effect.”
“Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot. … Most people go through life dreading they’ll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They’ve already passed their test in life. They’re aristocrats.”
“I do feel I have some slight corner on something about the quality of things. I mean it’s very subtle and a little embarrassing to me, but I really believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them.”
— Diane Arbus, photographer (1923-1971)
i just spent an hour on the floor of my closet re-reading old journals because some of you must go, okay? I just don’t know which ones.
These are the times when I find being a writer to be just… miserable. Writing = more navel-gazing and misery.
What did I find? A whole lot of nothing. I’m telling you. A lot of ranting about what a witch my boss was (she really was. whenever I stayed home sick she would call me mid-day to whimper in my ear, ask me where things were on her desk, and to tell me to come to work), a few sexy descriptions (which are now shredded — nothing I’d want to lift for fiction, just some random sexiness) (no, my kids don’t need to read that crap, after I’m gone) (note to self: stop writing about sex), and speaking of… pages and pages devoted to how it really was going to work out with Mr. Wrong this time, I mean it, Diary! etc. And two good quotes (neither of them from me, shocker I know):
“I pierce you with the ack-ack of love, flowerpot.” — Pepe Le Pew
(from the cartoon “Two Scent’s Worth — 1955)
and…
“I wept because I have lost my pain and am not yet accustomed to its absence. …” — Anais Nin
OK, the hour was worth it.
“When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with.” — Anais Nin, writer (1903-1977)
“Experts have / their expert fun / ex cathedra / telling one / just how nothing / can be done.” — Piet Hein, poet and scientist (1905-1996)
“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” –Helen Keller
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