In our artists we look for the many-colored voice, the multiple sensibility. The apogee of this, of course, is Shakespeare: even more than for his wordplay we cherish him for his lack of allegiance. Our Shakespeare sees always both sides of a thing, he is black and white, male and female - he is Everyman.
Zadie Smith, Speaking in Tongues
from The Best American Essays of 2010
I think I need to get me some works from this Best American Essays series. The short stories seem appealing as well.
(Source: bearbearpdx)
We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.
Chuck Palahniuk, articulating (but not explaining) this concept better than I have been able to so far.
(Source: aboyinmidair)
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust
(Source: firenspice)
In life, pay attention long enough to get it.
Bozekitty, extracting a nugget of wisdom from my random ramblings.
Literature, after all, is not there to reassure us; it’s supposed to reveal us, in all our contradictory complexity. The fact that it makes us uncomfortable is part of the point — like all great art, it demands that we confront our half-truths and self-deceptions, the justifications and evasions by which we measure out our daily lives.
David L. Ulin on The Expurgated ‘Huckleberry Finn’, in which this choice quote is taken quite out of context from a knee-jerk uproar about replacing the word “nigger” with the word “slave” even though the people complaining do not seem to realize that without updating, old text will slowly become unintelligible to contemporary readers due to the malleability and inevitable evolution of language (which is not to say that the specific choices made in this edition are necessarily right or wrong, but only that the motivations for modifying texts may be more complex than they initially appear).
(Source: eslingby)
The Fountainhead
Again with the context-free quotes. I guess I should read this next.
(Source: hikikomor-i)
Mrs. Kawakami was quiet for a moment, as though listening for something amidst the sounds the workmen were making outside. Then a smile spread over her face and she said: “This was such a splendid district once. You remember, Sensei?” I returned her smile, but did not say anything. Of course, the old district had been fine. We had all enjoyed ourselves and the spirit that had pervaded the bantering and those arguments had never been less than sincere. But then perhaps that same spirit had not always been for the best. Like many things now, it is perhaps as well that that little world has passed away and will not be returning. I was tempted to say as much to Mrs. Kawakami that evening, but decided it would be tactless to do so. For clearly, the old district was dear to her heart–much of her life and energy had been invested in it–and one can surely understand her reluctance to accept it has gone for ever.
An Artist of the Floating World, by Kazuo Ishiguro
INTP: Lord help me be less independent, but let me do it my way.
Prayers for Myers Briggs Types, the test that keeps on giving.
I mean they didn’t want me to eat the banana. My friends didn’t want me to eat any banana. I wanted to.
Thus: The Monkey.
Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth, in which Portnoy’s friend The Monkey describes how she earned her nickname.
Something to work on.. There is a version for the ladies as well.
I lost everything I got {on the bus|cause of drugs}. Leather jacket, cars, motorcycles, women, guns. You wanna fight? You don’t want to fight.
The Alley. I kind of miss it here.
I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.
Marilyn Monroe, telling it like it is.
Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: “I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today, I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today and I’m going to be happy in it.
Groucho Marx, telling it like it is.
The old stallion rolled one white, derisive eye: he saw so many of this aimless order of alley wanderers, forever emerging out of the shadows to feed him stolen restaurant sugar or doughnuts or salt he didn’t really want. He took them only because he sometimes got lonely himself over the week ends. Though knowing there are worse things than loneliness along the long hard road to the glue works.
Nelson Algren, “The Man With The Golden Arm”
The Rex
Their faces were
a few inches apart.
Spade took her face
between his hands
and kissed her mouth
roughly and
contemptuously.
The Rex, a book themed hotel in San Francisco.
