Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Ikkyu wrote that a solitary tune by a
fisherman is an invaluable treasure I know nothing
I will live for a short time
I catch all I can
I sing while I do it
— Maxon
Monday, January 6, 2014
I’d be sad if your twin died.
— Kristin
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Go learn something.
— NJ transit conductor
Saturday, January 4, 2014
Wimsy-pop.
— Cynthia’s bowling name
Friday, January 3, 2014
That is the thing about nature: there is so much of it.
— Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, Downton Abbey
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Today was 54 billionths of a second longer than yesterday.
— Robert Krulwich, “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” Radiolab
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Ulysses.
— Inside Llewyn Davis
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Stephen Hawking talking dirty.
— Cards Against Humanity
Monday, December 30, 2013
And just stay there till it’s over.
— Mary Bronner, “Diagnosis,” Radiolab
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Was a kind of grand experiment: novel and momentous, sometimes heady, other times unsettling, but unlikely to be repeated.
— Michael Barbaro and Kitty Bennett, “Cost of Being Mayor? $650 Million, if He’s Rich,” The New York Times
Saturday, December 28, 2013
Of course my history goes back a lot farther than yours.
— Dr. Charles “Chic” Shaver
Friday, December 27, 2013
I’m a fuckin Viet Cong!
— Irving Rosenfeld, American Hustle
Thursday, December 26, 2013
These may be, in the present phase of American civilization, distinctions without a meaningful difference behind them.
— A. O. Scott, “When Greed Was Good (and Fun),” The New York Times
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
WWII’s not winning itself.
—
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
You’ve got cucumbers on your eyes.
— First Aid Kit, “When I Grow Up”
Monday, December 23, 2013
Even if we knew where he was every minute of his waking life, would that tell us who he is?
— Errol Morris, Believing Is Seeing
Sunday, December 22, 2013
I once tried to come up with a definition of art. Always a risky enterprise. But the best I could come up with was: create an arbitrary set of rules, and then follow them slavishly.
— Errol Morris, Believing Is Seeing
Saturday, December 21, 2013
The snails, oddly enough, made me feel connected to history.
— Errol Morris, Believing Is Seeing
Friday, December 20, 2013
It comes to this: the use of a man, by himself and thus by others, lies in how he conceives his relation to nature, that force to which he owes his somewhat small existence. If he sprawl, he shall find little to sing but himself, and shall sing, nature has such paradoxical ways, by way of artificial forms outside himself. But if he stays inside himself, if he is contained within his nature as he is participant in the larger force, he will be able to listen, and his hearing through himself will give him secrets objects share. And by an inverse law his shapes will make their own way. It is in this sense that the projective act, which is the artist’s act in the larger field of objects, leads to dimensions larger than the man. For a man’s problem, the moment he takes speech up in all its fullness, is to give his work his seriousness, a seriousness sufficient to cause the thing he makes to try to take its place alongside the things of nature. This is not easy. Nature works from reference, even in her destructions (species go down with a crash). But breath is man’s special qualification as animal. Sound is a dimension he has extended. Language is one of his proudest acts. And when a poet rests in these as they are in himself (in his physiology, if you like, but the life in him, for all that) then he, if he chooses to speak from these roots, works in that area where nature has given him size, projective size.
— Charles Olson, “Projective Verse”
Thursday, December 19, 2013
In everyday situations, I will simply assume that doing what is right is in my interests; and once I have decided what is right, I will go ahead and do it, without thinking about further reasons for doing what is right.
— Peter Singer, Practical Ethics
