"Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw"
Victor Hugo..

"Anyone who thinks he's too small to make a difference has never been bit by a mosquito."

Jeannette Walls; Half Broke Horses.

I adore John Prine. I won his first record in some kind of give away about 40 years ago and I was totally hooked.

Ruth, I discovered John Prine a few years ago and really love him.

Ruth, great!

nice one Ruth.

We dance around in a ring and suppose
but the secret sits in the middle and knows.
Robert Frost.

Ain't it funny how an old broken bottle
Looks just like a diamond ring.

John Prine

Don't nobody else like quotations as much as me??

'Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass'
A.P. Chekhov.

Thanks Dottie, pleased to meet you! He sure was prolific and entertaining with his quotes too.

A lovely quote from one of my favorite authors. Nice.

Glad you like it Philip and hope you had a soft landing.

Like that one, Windfall Apple, thank you. And here I go falling off the edge ....

'Draw your chair up close to the edge.. of the precipice and I'll tell you a story'
F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Nice, Baxter, thanks.

Probably my favorite quote would have to be from Albert Einstein when he said:

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."

"We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour. In other words, we are the hero of our own story."

--Mary McCarthy


'We are the hero of our own story.' The more I think about that, the more profound I find it to be.

Amen, Sylvia and Steve -- and a tip of the hat to Kinky. I MUST find my picture of me with Mr. Friedman, his hat and his cigar when I get home and use it for my profile for a while!

It's on her album "Bowery Songs" that came out about four years ago, I think. Probably she had been singing it way before that, though.

Love these quotes, people, thanks! Now I want to hear Joan B. sing those lines.

I have so many favourite quotes;

The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

She stood there in my doorway,
Smoothing out her dress,
She said, This life is a thump-ripe melon
So sweet and such a mess

From the Ballad of Rexroth's Daughter as sung by Joan Baez

Fabulous, that one.

William Hazlitt, from his essay, "On The Aristocracy of Letters,"

"The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote."

Me too, nonstylish person that I am. Thank you, Jason.

Oh, I like that, Jason.

"...style, like sheer silk, too often hides eczema."
Camus, The Fall

Two passages from Mark Sarvas's Harry Revised, a new book I'm enjoying very much early on:

[edit: the Goodreads link to the book is incorrect - not a Rowlings bio!]

And now--in all too familiar Harry fashion--time stretches out, elongating like a thread, or like one of those diagrams of a ray that he remembers from geometry class. He never got rays, what they were for or why he should care about them, but he liked that they started from a fixed point at one end and went on to infinity at the other. It had the best of both worlds, he thought--permanence and eternal movement. (p. 11)

He has hurled a brick through her trust, and although he may spend the rest of his life collecting every last shard, massaging the creaky, fractured pane back into a whole, it will always be warped, irregular, distorting the views on both sides. (p. 47)

I'm so intrigued by this line from a book I am currently reading and really enjoying Love and Obstacles: ". . .I could remember that I used to love them, but I could not remember why, and I was terrified." (p.31)

Dottie, Kempton's best work is collected in "Rebellions, Perversities, and Main Events," (the title alone should give you a clue of his view of the world). Enjoy! Kempton was a good bit older than Ivins, but their careers did overlap, and I imagine they would have found much to admire in each other's work.


Dottie wrote: "Oh, Tom, that's really good -- I'll have to look for Kempton if Ivins is a reference point.

Merry -- I love that one -- good, old Winnie-ther-ya, know?"

Dottie wrote: "Merry wrote: "

Merry -- I love that one -- good, old Winnie-ther-ya, know?"

I love Pooh Bear - what a simple life he led (leads)!
So Dottie do you remember TTFN?"


Dottie, that would be "ta ta for now"! Let me wish you a happy birthday on this thread, I believe you are a May B-Day - hope you have/had a good one - TTFN!

Merry wrote: "

Merry -- I love that one -- good, old Winnie-ther-ya, know?"

I love Pooh Bear - what a simple life he led (leads)!
So Dottie do you remember TTFN?"


Should but I think it's slid out one of the holes in the sieve -- remind me, please.

Merry -- I love that one -- good, old Winnie-ther-ya, know?"</i>

I love Pooh Bear - what a simple life he led (leads)!
So Dottie do you remember TTFN?

Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.

-----John Lennon

What is the Meaning of Life?

Life is a series of memorable events one after another.

Oh, Tom, that's really good -- I'll have to look for Kempton if Ivins is a reference point.

Merry -- I love that one -- good, old Winnie-ther-ya, know?

"If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you."
-A. A. Milne

“Courage is the product of rehearsal, as cowardice is of recollection; neither comes on call upon occasions of surprise.” the late, great Murray Kempton, a journalistic soul mate of Ms Ivins.

Yes, Dottie, I'm at last reading again. Somehow, I've ended up with 4 volumes of "Swann's Way"(all Modern Library), so no matter where I go in the house, or at work, I can pick up where I left off.

Message 56 by Phillip and 60 by Gail, made me think of this one by the character Swann, in "Swann's Way,":

"The fault I find with our journalism is that it forces us to take an interest in some fresh triviality or other every day, whereas only three or four books in a lifetime give us anything that is of real importance."

farewell,

dash

Ah, yes, a bit of Proustian thought once again. That was one I really liked when I first encountered it, too. I'm being tempted to pick up a volume and meander through it but time is tight at the moment. Good to see you posting, Dash.

From "Swann's Way."

"But then, even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people."

farewell,

dash

I'm not sure that I would recommend the book to everybody, actually, it is just as frustrating as it is worthwhile. It's quite long, for one thing, and sometimes the characters are maddening, and there are perhaps too many coincidences you have to accept. Very much the book of a young man in many ways. But there are also many moments of insight, humor, and aphoristic insight.

Thank you, Philip. Great opening paragraph.

The arresting opening sentences from Steve Toltz's remarkable first novel A Fraction of the Whole:

You never hear about a sportsman losing his sense of smell in a tragic accident, and for good reason; in order for the universe to teach excruciating lessons that we are unable to apply in later life, the sportsman must lose his legs, the philosopher his mind, the painter his eyes, the musician his ears, the chef his tongue. My lesson? I have lost my freedom, and found myself in this strange prison, where the trickiest adjustment, other than getting used to not having anything in my pockets and being treated like a dog that pissed in a sacred temple, is the boredom.

Made more significant for me perhaps since one near and dear to me, a marvelous cook, has lost her ability the last two months to either taste or smell what she prepares.

A line from John Updike's collection The Afterlife and Other Stories:

... families teach us how love exists in a realm above liking and disliking, coexisting with indifference, rivalry, and even antipathy."

Thanks for the laugh, Janet! And a joke about reading too ... :)

After reading those deeply thoughtful quotations I feel silly posting this. It’s too good not to though.
My husband was watching an old special on AMC on Chuck Jones the animator last night, who shared a favorite quote he credited as being from Groucho Marx.
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend...

Inside a dog, it's too dark to read."

Philip, those same two passages struck me and made me write them down to consider later. The second made me question what lies I unwittingly tell myself out of fear or ignorance of myself.

A few sentences from the first chapter of Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, which I'm currently reading for the Classics Corner discussion:


But people can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life. (p. 5)

For I am — or I was — one of those people who pride themselves on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the master of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not decisions at all — a real decision makes one humble, one knows that one is at the mercy of more things than cam be named — but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not. (p. 20)

In honor of Blake Bailey's new bio of John Cheever:

"Then it is dark. It is a night where kings in golden suits ride elephants over the mountains."
from "The Country Husband"

"No one is interested in a character like Brimmer because the facts are indecent and obscene. But come then out of the museums, gardens, and ruins where obscene facts are as numerous as daisies in Nantucket."
from "Brimmer"

Oh my, that is powerful, Tango!